Jigsaw Puzzles

I love jigsaw puzzles.  I love the zoned out and relaxed feeling I get while doing a jigsaw puzzle.  After a certain point, some part of my non-conscious spacial brain takes over.  I love it when my hand reaches for a piece and places it in the right slot before I am aware of what I am doing.  I love the intimacy gained with an artwork after studying each of angles and the hues.  It is very different from taking an art history course, where you learn about the time period and the symbolism.  With a jigsaw puzzle, I study the minor details, the shape of a leaf, or reflections on water.

I was downtown at the Washington State Convention Center and saw this caught my eye.  My first thought was "This would make an awesome jigsaw puzzle."  I love the colors and the little faces.  I would want to get to know each of these creatures, understand their shapes and colors.

The Spirits Within by Alfredo Arreguin, 2002

You might not be able to tell from the photo, but this painting is huge.  It takes up most of the wall on the opposite side of an elevator bank.  Here are a few close ups:

I could spend hours looking at each of the little creatures Arreguin created here.  The best thing about a jigsaw puzzle is that you do get to spend hours studying what ever image you are trying to re-create.  I am guessing it took the artist months to create this.  Why shouldn't I spend a decent amount of time looking at very corner, especially for something so richly detailed?

My friend Grace introduced me last year to Card Kingdom, a puzzle and game shop with a cafe, in Ballard.  They have a massive selection of jigsaw puzzles, including the Liberty Puzzles, which are made out of wood.  When you open the box, you can smell the burnt wood from where the laser cut the pieces.

Here are some of the amazing shapes inside the box.

AFOL, "The Lego Movie" and "Les Miserables"

Here I confess:  I am an AFOL, also known as an Adult Fan of Lego.  I never would have been an AFOL if it wasn't for the Boy.

I never owned a lego set until I was 40 when my son bought me a yellow brick beach house for my birthday.  Since then, I've acquired the Medieval Village, the Friends Tree House and two sets with Johnny Depp minifigures, one from Pirates of the Caribbean and one from The Lone Ranger.

Jack Sparrow visits Olivia in her tree house.  He brings a rose.  She greets him with a sword.

My brother had legos growing up, but that was back in 1970s before the many of fancy sets with instructions came out.  Imagination fueled building, with a few pictures on the box for inspiration.  When I was in Ohio a while back, my son got out my brother's legos and there were still whirligigs my brother had built as a child.  I built houses with a door, windows and a roof.  I was not inspired, and building the same house over and over again got old.

The Boy took a liking to legos when he was a toddler.  He started with Duplos, bringing his creations to his sister's bus stop to show the other moms.  My favorite was the Stomp Drop Rocket.  It looked like a barge with a ladder.  Color patterns didn't matter.  He used whatever block was closest to his hands.  I had bought a generic box of the standard sized lego bricks for my daughter when she was four.  She had as much interest in lego as she did with Thomas the Tank Engine: almost none.  The Boy started playing with these smaller bricks when he was four.  His first set was the Airport Fire Truck, followed by the City Fire Station.  Six years later, he has tens of thousands of legos.  I am always surprised at how many bricks he has, until I realize he has gotten legos for every birthday, Christmas and random gift since 2007.  Toss in a few eBay purchases of ten pounds of random legos, and it adds up quickly.  The number of hours he has played with the bricks is almost as large as the number of bricks we own.

The Lego Room in a typically untidy state.

Given our passion for the little plastic bricks from Denmark, I took the Boy to see The Lego Movie last weekend.  I loved and appreciated the movie more than he did.  Unfortunately, I could relate to the villain.  Only once did I get out The Kragle.  One of his first lego sets was Sandy's Rocket from SpongeBob.  The Boy loved to carry the rocket around, but the fragile base kept falling apart.  Out came the super glue.  At the time, he didn't know it is considered extremely bad form--almost sacrilege--to glue legos together.  Now when he finds those old pieces, he looks at me with disbelief, and I am ashamed.

Since my supergluing lego faux pas, I've come around.  I started playing with legos simply as a way to connect with my son and spend time with him.  If I didn't, I would understand nothing about his world. While I am not the most creative builder, I have found my ways participate. I am his piece finder when he gets a new set and tidy up the lego room occasionally.  I also sort his legos by shape, making it easier for him to find the right piece when he builds.  (I find sorting legos a great way to relax.)  I keep all of his building instructions in a special place.  Instead of free building, I use the old instructions and rebuild sets.  Sometimes I'll look up building instructions on Lego.com for sets we don't own and build those.

"Why can't you just free build?" the Boy asks.  "Do you always need instructions?"

One day, to pull me out of my instruction filled world, he said we would have a free build contest.

"We get one hour and we each have to build a ninja house," he said.  My daughter would be the judge. We checked the clock, and started.  My ninjas had a Zen garden, with a brick wall surrounding the property filled with trees, plants and a gravel walkway.  I had better colors and bricks to work with, so the house was a bit more stylish than those I made in 1978.  Otherwise, I was back in my comfort zone, creating a rectangle shaped building with doors and windows.  I don't remember what the Boy's house looked like.  I think it had flames and was tricked out with an arsenal of lego weapons.  Mine had transparent bricks making a stained glass window.  My daughter declared me the winner.  The Boy was proud.

My daughter is generally not a fan of lego.  She got an Aqua Raiders set years ago.  She built it once, and that was it.  I took the kids to dinner last fall and we were discussing lego sets.

"The only lego set I would want would be Les Miserables," she said.  She is a huge fan of the musical.

This got us thinking.  In the car ride home, we brainstormed several scenes from the musical that could be made out of lego:

• The ship where Jean Valjean is a slave
• The Bishop's home with silver candesticks
• The factory that Jean Valjean owns and where Fantine works
• Jean Valjean lifting the cart off the Fauchelevant with Javert watching
• The Thenardiers' Inn
• The Barricade
• The Sewers of Paris
• Javert Jumping off the Bridge
• The Wedding

I loved the idea.  When we got home, the Boy and I started making the Thenardiers' Inn.  I had big dreams of making the several scenes from the musical and novel and submitting them to BrickCon at the Seattle Center in October.  I poached the windows from the Medieval Village, a structure which had yet to be taken apart.  The Boy started on the outside structure of the Inn.  I free-built a fireplace, and the Boy added light bricks.  We found minifigures for Jean Valjean, Cosette, Javert and the Thenardiers.  We didn't quite finish the Inn, and the Boy and his friends remodeled it several times before it was compete.  Some of the changes we not authorized.  Several of the patrons of the inn were regurgitating their meals, others were urinating.  Days after we started, the Inn caught on fire, was bombed, and looked like it was part of the barricade.

Which brings me to my conflict.  Should I commandeer the collection to build Les Miserables?  He has tens of thousands of legos.  Would he miss the ones I would use?  Should I let the Boy be a boy, and have his room?  Or should I get my time?  I've been his lego enabler for years, supporting his addiction.  When do I get to build?

Why am I so grumpy and greedy about this?  Shouldn't I be a gracious parent, letting him enjoy his toys?  It is complicated.  In this case, the parent is the pupil and the teacher is the child.  Doesn't the mentor need to let his student blossom, find her own way, create her own mini-masterpiece?  It is much harder when your protege is your mom.

My son always says he wants to do something important, to make a difference in the world.  At times, he is frustrated that he is only a ten year old boy, without the power to change the world.  He has made a difference.  It might not be an epic change, but he has taught me something new.

Is he ready to share his studio for the sake of his student?  That remains to be seen.  While he may be a great teacher, he is, after all, a ten year old boy.

Would I be Friends with My Daughter if I were 13?

I was shopping the other day with my daughter at a mall store that targets teens and tweens.  Pop music blasted between video interviews of regular kids wearing the shop's clothes.  Not fun.  As she was trying on jeans that fit like a second skin, I was having a minor anxiety attack.  Why I am spending a rare sunny winter day at the mall in this awful store?  My daughter had grown, and needed new clothes, so I really didn't have much choice.  At least I didn't have to drive across 520 or to Lynnwood.

As I was trying to occupy myself during this torturous excursion into youth culture, I asked myself a question I have asked myself several times over the past thirteen years:  would my daughter and I be friends if we were the same age, growing up at the same time?  To properly answer this question, I would need a time travel machine and some other scientific advances, but let's pretend.

This is a seriously hard question.  I can't think about this with my son.  It is sort of like a fraction with zero as the denominator.  The answer doesn't exist.

x/0 = ?

This graph shows that zero as the denominator is undefined.
(From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hyperbola_one_over_x.svg#file )

As her mother, it is my job to see that she grows up educated, kind and with relatively good manners.  It is her job to question everything I say.  From my perspective, I would not choose a friend who questions everything I say.  From her perspective, she would likely not choose a friend who constantly tells her to chew with her mouth closed, nag her about folding the laundry and to pull her long hair off of her dinner plate.

With the three decade difference in our ages, I struggle to see what we would have had in common. Clearly, not our choice in clothes.  Everything I wore until I was 22 and got a job was baggy and over sized.  She wears clingy clothes with a confidence I have never had.  She is very much into her appearance, wearing fancy clothes and constantly polishing her nails.  I like fleece and wash and wear hair.  Some of our differences are due to the years in which we spent our youth, but others are just because we are different.  I studied French and played the flute.  She studies Japanese and plays the clarinet and piano.  She is a much better musician than I ever was.  My favorite class in school was history.  She prefers science.   I was into Student Council and dance.  She plays soccer and likes to rock climb.  We are both relatively shy, but what we do with it is different.  I would rather go for a bike ride while she sits on the couch and reads.  She loves going off to camp where she doesn't know a soul.  I went to camp with friends.  When she skis, she pushes herself beyond her skill level.  I am (and was) far more cautious.  I like to swear (though I am cutting back) and she likes to say "Holy Goodness!"

Instead of being like me, she is her own person.  In some ways, she chooses to be the opposite of me, just because I am her mother (see swearing.)  Would I have wanted to be friends with a carbon copy of myself?  Probably not.  We will never know is she would have been my mean girl or my bestie.  I don't think we are such opposites that we never would have crossed paths, nor do I think she would have hated me.  I could see us sitting at the same lunch table, perhaps, but I don't know we share enough ground to have become good friends.

I get kind of sad when I think about it that way.  I suppose there are some mothers and daughters who would have been perfect opposites and hated each other as kids.  Others might have been good friends.  I'll never know, so I really can't be sad about something that could never happen.  It is as if we are parallel lines, both going in the same direction, never to cross.  

 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Parallel_transversal.svg#file

I am glad I know her now.  Even if it means trips to the mall.

Graffiti

I am not a big fan of graffiti, but I have seen some interesting scribbles lately that I couldn't pass up.

I saw this three eyed face on a stair railing in Ravenna Park a few weeks back.  Maybe the middle dot is a nose.  It looks more like an eye to me.  I think this appealed to me (I use the term "appeal" loosely) because I could kind of tell what the graffiti person was trying to draw.  I usually can't tell what the scribbles mean or if they are trying to represent anything.  This, I can figure out.

I saw this one (below) in Capitol Hill near 10th Ave and Pike Street.  This tag line caused me to look twice.  I am still perplexed by headline on the plywood, and I don't understand why I find this crass statement so fascinating.  Is this the name of the graffiti artist?  Why the asterisk at the end of the word?  I don't see a footnote.  Is this statement an editorial comment on the bands posted below?  How long has it been there?  How long will it stay?  Notice that the people who posted the band posters did not post over the headline, but they posted over the other graffiti.  Maybe the idea was to write an eye catching headline, then people might pay better attention to the posters underneath.  Look at the marks under the band posters.  What does they mean?  I have no idea.

I am curious about the person who wrote this headline.  It seems they wanted to communicate to a broader audience than just people who understand graffiti.  I don't understand 99% of graffiti I see on the street.  I know I am not the target audience; nevertheless, why graffiti artists aren't more direct, representational, or clever? Why can't they write haiku, or short witty statements like a tweet?  How about pictures of birds or people?  Have any of them taken an art history course?

I shared this with my family over dinner last night.  They thought it was funny.

Did Steve Jobs Eat the Marshmallow?

In the late 1960's and early 1970's, Walter Mischel from Stanford University conducted his famous marshmallow experiment. Groups of four years olds were given a marshmallow and told if they waited for 15 minutes and did not eat the marshmallow, they could have a second one. If they decided to eat it before the grown up came back, they would not get another one. It was a longitudinal study. Mischel followed the children and discovered that those who waited were more successful in life, including generally having higher levels of education, a healthy weight, and higher SAT scores. The children who ate the marshmallow had more problems and engaged in risky behavior, like drinking, taking drugs, or becoming parents as teenagers.

This study has been referenced in two books that I have recently read: How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough and Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman. These authors cite the Stanford study of impulse control in their analysis of ways to improve educational outcomes (Tough) and become more functional, efficient and excellent adults* (Goleman). Passing this marshmallow test seems to be a major indicator to success in life. I am sure there are crazy parents out there reading these books, training their preschoolers not to eat the marshmallow. (I bet dessert is lots of fun in those homes. You can have two puddings if you wait 20 minutes. Daddy, set the timer.)

I am sure this study is valid for a vast majority of people and the conclusions are reasonable. Nevertheless, I wonder about the outliers, and at what point does too much impulse control become a bad thing.

First, let's look at too much impulse control. For my test subject, I will consider myself. While I did not take this test as a four year old, I am sure I would NOT have eaten the marshmallow. Ever. I was the type of kid who would save a candy bar until I forgot about it, which is not necessarily a good thing. If I were in the study, I'd probably still be sitting there, looking at the marshmallow. Yet, I would be considered a "success" according to people who interpret the results: I have a college education, I had a good job in my pre-motherhood life, and I am good at saving money.** Ta da.

But look at the carpeting in my house. It's needed to be replaced for years. My husband and I have this circular conversation that ends up nowhere. We want to replace the carpeting with hard wood floors, but are also considering remodeling the house. We don't want to install the new floors if we are going to remodel, but remodeling is a massive undertaking and we'd have to move out for six months.  The cost difference between the two projects is huge. We go around in a circle and then do nothing.  My infinite patience is kind of a problem here. I wish I had a bit less impulse control and a little more "Just Do It."

Now, let's look at an outlier. Did Steve Jobs eat the marshmallow? We can't go back and test Steve as a four year old. My guess is he might have been at an extreme. He might have eaten the marshmallow in the first ten seconds, looked to his mom and said, "I am done. I have better things to do.  Can we go home?" Or, he might have sat for three days looking at the marshmallow, beating it down, proving to the little puffy pile of sugary fluff that he could dominate it. "I am not going to let some little piece of candy defeat me." A third possibility is he could have been philosophical. "Do I really need two marshmallows?  One is enough..." From what I read, Jobs lead a minimalist life. Look at his wardrobe of black turtlenecks and jeans. My husband thinks Jobs would have cut the marshmallow in half. "Now I have two..."

According the Stanford's criteria for an organized life, Steve Jobs was a botch. He dropped out of college and he fathered a child in his early twenties with his girlfriend. My guess is that coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s in northern California, he probably smoked some pot. Wait, let me google that. According to the internet, he did. Given this behavior, my guess is that he probably would have eaten the marshmallow.

If he had eaten the marshmallow, he would have skewed the results. While he would have been consistent with some of the markers like not finishing college, he would have blown away how much money he saved or overall career success.

One outlier (and one that I am fictionalizing as well) does not discount the rest of the data. I'll acknowledge that impulse control is in general good to have. But what about times and places where too much impulse control could be a bad thing? Are there times when we should just carpe the marshmallow? Pretend you are living in the middle ages, hunting a deer. Your family hasn't eaten in days, maybe weeks. You had better think fast and shoot the deer, or else you might never eat. You do not want to wait and hope for two deer. Or what about the doctor or nurse that has to perform CPR You don't want them pondering if you really need CPR when your heart is stopped and you are turning blue. In a pre-industrialized society, perhaps lack of impulse control was good thing. Farmers needed large families, so waiting until they were thirty and stable to have kids might not have been a good thing. Or maybe you just want new flooring in your living room before your kids leave for college.

I am going to take the interpretation of the marshmallow test results with a grain of salt based on my analysis of myself and my fictionalized and speculative analysis of Steve Jobs. He invented the iPhone, iPad and co-founded Pixar. I did not. Which begs questions for future social science research: Are there positive attributes for eating the marshmallow, and what are the downsides for those who waited?

* I am not sure if that is how Daniel Goleman would characterize his book, but that is what I am taking away from it.
** Before we had kids, I asked my husband what he liked best about me. His reply: "Your ability to manage money." He was sincere and serious.

The "Send" Button

A few days ago, I was in a particularly foul mood.  I had talked to some friends about this person who was irritating me, and they all tried to talk me off the ledge.  For the most part, they succeeded and helped me to stay calm throughout the day.  Their points were logical and well-taken.

In the evening, after I put the kids to bed, I started to feel annoyed again.  The rational and reasonableness I had gained during the day was fading and my emotions took over.  I started to build up arguments of why I was completely justified in being outraged.

So I wrote an email to the person who was the root cause of my irritation.  Describing exactly how I felt.  With no emotion left unexpressed.  It was, as they say in Harry Potter, a howler.

I knew while I was writing that this note was mean spirited and might have deep repercussions.  I knew that sending a nasty email was not the best way to solve the problem.  Yet, I felt so much better after writing it all out.  Though it was not the kindest letter, it did help me to clarify my thoughts.

But writing it wasn't enough.  I had to hit the "send" button.  I wanted someone to read my diatribe.  I needed to hit the send button.  It was getting later, and I was getting more worked up.  Fortunately, there was some small sliver my rational mind still working that said "Do not send to intended recipient."  So I marked the email "Draft" and sent it to my friend, Diane.  I wrote an introduction telling her I was thinking of sending this to the irritant, and asked what she thought.  Hitting the send button worked.  I felt a huge release of tension after I sent it.

Why was the send button so magical?  Why did I need to hit it?  Why wasn't it enough to just leave the note in my draft box?  Writing how I felt helped clarify my thoughts.  When I hit the send button, the note became something more than my rantings.  It became a permanent record of how I felt, where my feelings could not be erased.  Hitting the send button gave me temporary closure.  Once the note was gone, I stopped stewing for the night.  It gave me power, even if I sent to someone else.  It also gave me a responsibility to figure out how to deal with this problem directly.  I couldn't just send it to Diane, and then not follow-up.  Diane would hold me accountable, both to be civilized and to figure out a reasonable next step.

Diane goes to sleep early and wakes up early.  I knew she wouldn't check her email until the morning when she is drinking her coffee.  When she saw it, she immediately replied and put up the roadblock:

Lauren, 

Holy shit!!! Have you already sent X_____ that draft!?

She recommended that I rewrite the note a dozen times.  When I get it right, I should hand the note to  the person instead of sending it via email.  One of my husband's colleagues recommends a similar strategy for writing difficult letters in professional situations:  write whatever it is you need to get off your chest, delete it, and then write a new letter you intend to send, minus the vitriol.  I did talk to the irritant about what was bothering me.  I left the bitterness on the page and did not bring it to the conversation.

I am very lucky to have a friend like Diane at the other end of the send button.  I will apologize to her, though, as she probably burned her throat and nasal passages while choking on her coffee while reading my email.  Shouldn't we all have a friend (or two or three or four) who can be our "send" button, the one who will safely listen to our rants and then bring us back to earth?

Goods News and Bad News at the Seahawks Victory Parade

The Good News:  The Seattle Seahawks win the Super Bowl.   They decide to have a parade downtown today.  My son, the boy, wants to go.

The Bad News:  Seattle Public Schools declared any absences from school today will be declared "unexcused."  What to do?  Are the McGuire's rule followers or renegades?  What will they remember twenty years from now: what they did in school on a given day, or trekking downtown to celebrate the second sports national title ever in Seattle?

I ask my husband what he thinks, mostly out of curiosity.  "Of course they should go to school."  That was not the answer I was hoping for.  He thinks McGuire's are rule followers.  I decide my husband needs more fun in his life.

The Good News:  Seattle Public Schools realizes they will be giving 50% of the student body unexcused absences and allows principals to decide.  Principals, being politicians, promise excused absences at my children's schools, a future Super Bowl win, and a chicken in every pot.  We are going.

Before we leave, I walk the dog.  I walk him for 45 minutes figuring I don't know when we will return.  I also figure a walk through Ravenna Park will provide tranquility before a day that will be largely unpredictable.  I am a little nervous, as I tend to be more a Baggins Hobbit, but I decide to be Tookish today and embrace adventure.  Sort of.  Maybe.  We'll see.

Ravenna Park this morning.

The Bad News:  The estimates of the number of people expected downtown change from 300,000 to 500,000.  The extra ~200,000 must be SPS students and families.  City officials recommend public transportation, which is fine.  I pick my daughter up from school and wait for the bus.  At 10:45, the number 16 arrives, packed to the gills.  The driver, an Asian man with gray hair in late fifties with Urkel style glasses, politely tells the dozen people at the stop that he can't take any more riders unless they are going downtown for a doctor's appointment or are disabled.  My son offers to break his leg so we can get on the next bus.  After waiting for a total of a half an hour, we punt.

Urkel and his signature eyewear.  Big glasses are back in style, or so I've heard. 

My daughter decides to go back to school.  She has a class after school and needs to be back for it.  The boy wants me to drive downtown.  There is no way I am driving.  My Tookishness is fading fast.  I debate whether to send the boy back to school or allow him to watch the parade at home.  I feel like a bad mom for not being better organized and figuring this out earlier.

The Good News:  As I pull up to drop off my daughter, I chat with another mom.  I've never met her before, and asked if she was going to the parade.

"Yes," she said.  "Would you like a ride?"  Honestly, I was not fishing for a ride.  I was mostly curious to see if I should drive down myself, and her answer was going to be a data point.  She plans to park near Eastlake and then walk downtown.  I move my car from the drop-off lane, and take her up on her offer.

The Bad News:  If there aren't enough busses to get us there, how will we get home?  Plus, my car is in Wallingford and I live near the U District.  Do I try to catch a bus home or back to Wallingford?

The Good News:  Eh.  I'll figure that out later.  Everyone else downtown is going to be in a pickle, too.

The Bad News:  It is now 11:10.  The parade was supposed to start at 11:00.  I am hoping to make it downstream enough so we can see something.  I am not confident about where I am going, so I follow the South Lake Union Tram tracks down Westlake and hope for the best.

The Good News:  The boy and I huff it down Westlake and make it to 4th and Stewart around 11:30.  I am shocked I figured this out without my phone or GPS.  And we have not missed the parade.

The Bad News:  The boy can't see and it is cold.

The boy at the parade.

The Good News:  We are standing next to a portable cell tower which is walled off from the crowd by a portable chain link fence with concrete feet.  A six year old girl has climbed the fence to get a better view.  The boy climbs the fence and can see.

The Bad News:  Another mom warns me there is a security guard there who will tell him to get off the  fence.

The Good News:  We decide to wait until the parade starts before he climbs the fence and bet the guard will be busy watching the parade, too.  The boy weighs about 70 pounds.  He is the perfect age where he is strong enough to climb the fence without getting hurt, and light enough not to damage it.

The Bad News:  It is 12:30, cold and the parade hasn't started yet.

The Good News:  I packed sandwiches for lunch.

The Bad News:  The kids around us are eying our food.  I brought a shoulder purse with a zipper to deter pickpockets.  Now I am worried that the little boy next to me will offer to arm-wrestle me for my leftover hamburger from dinner last night.  I am also worried that I would lose.  (In retrospect, I should have offered the kids some of the scones I made earlier this morning.  Then there is the old rule of not taking candy from strangers.  I suppose it applies to scones, too.)

The Good News:  The parade rolls by starting at 12:40.

The Bad News:  The boy can't see well.  What little we can see are chartered buses with tinted window.  This is possibly the worst parade ever.  The boy is disheartened and cold, and he wants to leave.

The Good News:  We step back a bit, and can see better.  Behind the portable cell tower is a small truck with a flatbed.  People are climbing on the sides of the truck to see.  The boy climbs up.  A young woman asked the guard if it is okay to stand in the truck.  The security guard gives the smallest nod possible and a shrug.  The boy climbs in the truck too, with a great view of the parade.  I decide to stay on the ground and let the kids see.  Since twenty people are now in the truck and not on the fence, I have a small line of sight where I can see what is happening.  The boy is delighted.  He saw Beast Mode, Russell Wilson, Pete Carroll, Richard Sherman, Golden Tate, a bunch of other guys whose names I don't remember, and the Lombardi Trophy.  This is what I saw.

A nice conifer in downtown Seattle.

I can go home and watch the parade online to see who I missed going by.

The Bad News:  The parade ends and the boy is cold and hungry, and wants to head home.  I have to figure out how we are going to get there.  I see thousands of people pouring in the direction of the bus tunnel.  I decide to head north, against the crowd and towards the Space Needle and Seattle Center.  The parade started there, and I hope the crowds have cleared.  There is a good bus stop there where lots of routes start.  I hope my gamble pays off.

The Good News:  I've been downtown enough to know there is a Top Pot Donuts on 5th Ave.  It is on the way to the Seattle Center.

The Bad News:  The line at Top Pot is long.  I check the map on my cell phone to see how long it would be if we were to walk home.  The answer:  4.1 miles or about an hour and a half.  I hope the donut is enough food in addition to the sandwich for the boy.  I try to see how far it is to my kids' schools in Wallingford (and where I've parked the car), but the cell phone coverage is down.  I hope the donut is enough bribery if I have to tell the boy we are walking home.

The Good News:  The long line gives us time to warm up.  They must have been expecting the crowd because there are lots of people behind the counter and the line moves quickly.  We get donuts, hot chocolate and a decaf mocha.  We follow the monorail track to the Seattle Center.

The Bad News:  I can't remember if the 74, which has a stop around the corner from my house, runs during the day.  I am thinking it doesn't.  If we get there and there isn't an appropriate bus, I've just walked about mile in the opposite direction of my home.

The Good News:  We get to the bus stop, and there about six buses there.  I check to see which ones are heading to either the U District or Wallingford.  We see the 32 which says it is going to the U District, which is good.  I keep walking until I get to the first bus, which is stopped at the traffic light.  It is the 16, with the same driver we saw earlier with the Urkel glasses!  Score!  This bus will take me directly to Wallingford and back to my car.  I knock on the bus door and smile.  The bus is full and I hope he lets us on.  The boy thinks I am impolite for knocking when the bus has pulled six feet away from the stop.  I lived in Chicago without a car for almost ten years.  I know how to ride a bus.  Anything goes.

And we are on!!!

The Bad News:  I have to stand behind the yellow line behind the driver's seat or the driver will "get in trouble."  I don't really fit, but I put my shoe over the line to honor the letter if not the spirit of the law.  I thought better of telling him when I lived in Chicago that I often rode standing on the bottom step next to the door, or up against the windshield.  Sometimes I stood so close to the driver I could look down the back of his shirt and read the tag.  I don't tell him that in Chicago eight people could fit between the yellow line and the door.  If I did, he might kick me off, and that would be bad.

The Good News:  Some people decide the bus is going too slow, and get off.  A nice woman with two boys in the first bench tells them to squinch and let my son sit.  I move and am in compliance with the yellow line rule.  The driver doesn't need to throw me off the bus.  (I later find out the nice woman is a police officer.)  The bus moves slowly until we hit Aurora which is wide open.  People on the bus cheer.  On the ride, I learn that people came to the parade from Missoula, Montana and Alaska.  I also heard someone estimated there were 1.2 million people at the parade, which is about one third of the population of the Seattle Metro area.  (Later estimates were about 700,000, which is greater than the population within the Seattle city limits.)

The boy gets back to school with an hour and a half to spare.  He is tired, but decides that telling the five kids left in the school about his adventure will boost his mood.

I get home.  Our dog, Fox, is delighted to see me.  After walking the dog in the morning and then being outside on my feet for five hours in 32 degree weather, I am glad to return.  I look forward to some quiet time, warming up with a cup of tea and resting my sore feet.

The Bad News:  The dog wants to go for a walk.

Maggie's Kitchen

The other day I went to drop off some of my son's old clothes at a friend's house.  She has two younger boys, and I figured the jackets and sweatpants could be worn by at least one if not both of them.  As I dropped the stuff off, she invited me in for tea.  

I've been in her house before, but never sat down in her kitchen.  It was on the small side, had old appliances, yellow countertops and a red backsplash.  No granite, no stainless steel.  The yellow and red are not garish, but remind me of daffodils and strawberries, lemons and cherries.  Every horizontal surface was covered, except for the formica covered kitchen table which was clean and clear.  Even the stove was covered--the glass cooktop was stacked with brownies and shortbread cookies from Metropolitan Market.  Behind my chair was a hutch that looked about a hundred years old that looked like it came from a farm house.  Stacked on its shelves were mismatched china cups and plates.  There was a shelf near the ceiling* was lined with glass and crystal bowls and pitchers.  Next to the hutch were more shelves, with bins for each of her three kids artwork, art supplies and homework.  Her new dog--a puppy who weighs about fifty pounds--would bound in and out, resting its giant forelegs and head on my lap.  

It was the best kitchen I have ever sat in.

I ponder this because another friend of mine is selling her house and she sent out the listing to people she knows.  Her family has moved into their new home, and the old house is staged.  Everything personal has been removed and replaced with showroom furniture and accessories.  The house looked beautiful.  Yet, if I had to choose a kitchen, I would have picked Maggie's.  If she ever needs to sell her house, I would almost recommend leaving her kitchen as is.  A realtor might say her kitchen is cluttered and dated, and that everything personal should be removed.  They might be right.  People are looking to buy a house they can imagine living in.  Yet, this is what I liked about her home:  I could imagine living there.

Her kitchen is the heart of her busy home.  You can walk into it and see what her family is about.  Maggie collects odd pieces of china and bowls.  She has space for her kids homework and art.  Dessert is an important part of the family meal.  Annual classroom photographs are squeezed into every surface that can hold a magnet, including the door of the oven.  It all screams that she lives a rich, full and busy life. 

I like her kitchen because I find it liberating.  It washed away any notions of what magazines tell us our kitchens should look like.  Now, I am all in favor of having professional advice when it comes to redesigning a major space.  I had a friend who studied interior design and she helped me pick paint colors for my house in St. Louis.  Very helpful.  Yet, designers can't tell you what you like.  They can't tell you to collect teacups and saucers, or the importance of sharing your children's artwork.

I remember reading an essay about imperfect homes.  I think it was written by Erma Bombeck.  She said if you don't invite people to your house because it is not perfect, you will never have people over.  She said it is better to have guests than to sit home alone.  I agree, and will take it a step further -- better to have a house that reflects your life, rather than your life fitting your house.

* I know there is a formal name for this, but it escapes me.

Skiing this Weekend

We went skiing for the first time this winter on Sunday.  February 2 is a late start to the season out here.    I am a mediocre skier, but I enjoy spending time outside in the winter.  I am the slowest skier in my family by a lot.  When I am the first one to make it to the bottom of the hill, I am convinced someone in my family has crashed.  I am right 9 out of 10 times.  I should keep stats.

I am okay with my cautiousness.  I want to live to ski another day.  That, and my house is on a hill and we have twenty some odd steps to get to my front door.  If I broke or sprained anything along my spine or south of my bellybutton, I would be housebound for a long time.  Or, I could get a wheelchair accessible room at a nearby hotel and my family would have to fend for themselves for a few weeks with cooking, shopping, laundry, etc.  Hmmm.  That doesn't sound too bad, except for the injury part.

Here is a bit of anger poetry.

Snowboarders

Raping the slopes
And pillaging the powder,
You leave an icy trail
Like a snail leaves
Slime.
You can't see me
As your flat board
Irons the corduroy.

++++

I have this problem where I am in capable of saying bad things about people in public, even if it is a general group of people and not one person in particular.  My anger poetry makes me feel uncomfortable as I might offend someone.  I respect good snow boarders who go down the slopes with the top of their board pointing down the hill.  People who skid down with their board perpendicular to the lift drive me nuts.  I need some of that snow they are scraping off the mountain to cut my edges in so I can turn and not end up at the Silver Cloud Hotel for six weeks.

I also almost got knocked off a cliff by a snowboarder at Whistler.  I was taking the green way down a slope, which in the summer is a service road.  It is relatively flat, and has a steep incline on one side and a drop off on the other.  Flat parts are really hard for snowboarders as they don't have poles to push them along.  This one boarder was getting up with his back to the flow of traffic.  He jerked his board back about four feet.  I had a choice: get hit by this guy or fall off the cliff.  I was lucky to find the middle ground and avoid both.  The downside was I started swearing, not at him, but just in general.  The Canadians don't allow swearing on the mountain.  They are so polite.