Sweat & $1,000 Legos

I worked out Sunday night for the first time since my surgery. It was an easy-peasy 20 minutes on the recumbent bike at the gym. It was the first time I've sweat since my surgery. Tonight, I did thirty minutes on the elliptical to prove that Sunday was not a fluke. I survived! I was sweaty and I survived! My can feel the muscles in my quads starting to reform. I'll probably need to hit the weight room soon. I've been frustrated with my slow recovery, but it is better than overdoing it and regretting it later.

I am looking for a gift for Pedro for his birthday. He still loves Legos, and Lego continues to expands its marketing to wealthy adults. I am beginning to think Legos might be out of my price range. There was a $630 Lego set of the Eiffel Tower, and a $679 set of the Titanic. I texted Pedro a link and said "WTF?!?!" 

His reply: I wonder when there'll be a $1000 Lego set.

I bet soon enough. But what would it be? What would be the Holy Grail, the most coveted set ever that people would drop $1K. It could be weird and obscure, that super fans of something would any amount to get it, like women in their twenties are dropping whole paychecks (more or less) to see Taylor Swift in concert. Or would it be something practical, like a side table for your living room? A planter? A bird bath? Would it be something iconic, like the Eiffel Tower, but I can't think of anything more iconic. They've already done the Taj Mahal. A mountain, like Mt. Fuji, or Mt. Rainier? 

Mt. Everest?

I went to BrickCon one year and a woman made the Tiger's Nest Monastery in Bhutan out of Lego. It was super cool.

I bet the geniuses as Lego are working on ideas for the $1000 Lego set as I type.

New Shoes, New Wallet and the Taj Mahal; and His Story v Mine

The Boy hasn't been to school since January. He has spent days and days in bed, sleeping and looking at his phone or computer. He might get up on the weekends to ski, but that is about it. He is also taking Driver's Ed.

This is anxiety and depression.

We are seeking residential treatment for him, starting very soon we hope.

And I think he hopes so, too.

Since depression hit, the Boy has become nocturnal, sleeping til after noon and knocking around the house at night. One night, he got up and read the packet about the options for residential treatment. He got out a pen and annotated it. He signed all of the forms that said "Student Signature" and he checked off the states where he would consider moving: Colorado, Montana, Utah. Anyplace with mountains where he can ski.

Since we've started talking about treatment, the Boy got his haircut. I gave him money and he took the bus to the mall to shop on his own. He bought new tennis shoes and a new wallet.

This weekend, he has friends over. The boys bounced on the trampoline, walked to Burgermaster for lunch, and nearly finished the 5,923 piece Lego Taj Mahal that the Boy got for Christmas. In the past, it would take the Boy days--not weeks or months--to finish a Lego set of this size. His friends came over and they worked on it together. The last thing left is the dome.

I know this is his story to tell, but it is mine, too. I've watched him suffer for too long. He is one kind of pain, and I am in another watching him. Pain is a useful and confusing feeling at times. It can tells us to stop and rest and stay where we are, or it can motivate us to make a change. Depending on the situation, sometimes both can be right.

Fixing one pain can cause another. While I am happy to get him the help he needs, I will miss him. This is the bargain of being a parent, the price of being the primary witness to someone's life, the love and pain combined.

Art of the Brick and Shoes

Yesterday, Jack, the Boy and I went to see the "Art of the Brick" exhibit by Nick Sawaya at the Pacific Science Center. The exhibit was more interesting was than I thought it would be. In addition to his own creations, Sawaya had reproductions of major artworks, like the Mona Lisa.

This piece has 75,00 pieces, one of the largest in Sawaya's collection.

The Boy had been dragged to numerous art exhibits and museums this summer. He had seen several of the pieces live and in person, which was then cool to see them recreated in Lego.

I spent all day on my feet, and in shoes I haven't worn since my accident. I wore my black Noat shoes, which are very comfortable but have a thick sole that is an inch high in places. And I survived. I have been out of surgery for six months, and I was glad that I could make it around. I had no doubt that I could after our vacation to France. Like our vacation to France, I was pooped at the end of the day and I was too tired to do my PT exercises at home. The Boy suggested we watch the X-Files, and I sank into the couch and couldn't get up.

T-Rex. I didn't notice how many bricks were in this one.

The Knack: The Boy and His Porsche; Me and My Bike

The Boy loves Legos, or used to love them. His Lego room was out of commission recently because Anita and I were painting the upstairs of the house. I have been trying to ween him from excessive computer and smart phone use. In the past, I've gotten him a large Lego set each summer to keep him busy. One summer, I got him an NXT, a Lego robotics kit. I thought maybe if I got him a new Lego set this summer, he would find something new to do besides play Flappy Birds or The Binding of Isaac, the theme of which is a voice tells Isaac's mother to rid Isaac of evil and lock him in the basement before she sacrifices him. The player is Isaac, and he needs to escape. It is loosely based on the Bible story of Isaac. Loads of happiness there. No wonder the Boy would become depressed and angry after playing too many games.

To solve this problem that cost us $400 for the phone and another $40 a month, we bought the Boy a Lego Porsche. It is expensive. Trust me. It has 2,704 parts and it weighs about 15 pounds. Lego had to redesign the box because the set was so heavy the box was getting damaged when it was shipped to homes. We had to get one at the Lego store because they have a different shipping packaging from the consumer shipping. Anyhow, I am out more than $700 to create and then fix this problem. But I am a huge Lego fan, so I wasn't too depressed about it.

"Do you know why we got you this Lego set?" I asked the Boy on the car ride home.

"So I don't play with my phone as much," he said. At least he got the point without me having a spell it out for him.

The Boy got home and opened the box. He was ecstatic. "This is exhilarating! I am getting 'The Knack' back!" "The Knack" is a line from the movie Hunt of the Wilderpeople which we saw last week.

"Ikea says 'Some assembly required.' Lego is 'All assembly required,'" said the Boy as he was building a set that came with 500 black rivets. I figured he had 500 black rivets at home already, and maybe he could have a gotten a discount for using his own rivets.

"I don't hate the phone," I lied to the Boy. I actually loathe the smart phone. "But limiting your time on the phone gives you time to do what you love."

"$300 is a bargain for getting the Knack back," said Jack. "Too bad it cost $400 to lose it in the first place."


Yesterday, while Boy was at "Magic the Gathering"* tournament at a local game shop, I was getting my Knack back. Jack and I biked to Ballard for lunch again. We didn't realize that most of industrial Ballard is closed for lunch on Saturdays, and that is the only time it is every closed for lunch. We did find a place to eat called Gerald's. I saw their fried chicken and waffle sandwich through the window, and it looked great. When I got inside, the woman next to me was eating a breakfast poutine. While fried chicken and waffles** is a southern and Pennsylvanian thing, poutine is Canadian. Poutine is some kind of gravy and cheese served over a bed of french fries.

**** This next section is for women over 40.  You have been warned. ****

I ask the waitress what I should get -- the waffles and chicken or the poutine. Both looked and smelled delicious. The gravy was made from breakfast sausage and cheddar cheese, and the whole thing was topped with a scrambled egg. It was delicious, except there should have been a warning. I don't need to know the calories, fat content or salt levels. I stop eating when I am full. What I wish they did have was a fiber or constipation warning level on restaurant menus, something like this:

     -- Breakfast Poutine: 🚫💩
     -- Mac and Cheese with Pulled Pork: 🚫💩
     -- Caesar Salad: 🌾👍🏼💩💩
     -- Kale and Quinoa: 🌾👍🏼💩💩💩💩

**** You may now continue reading if you are not a woman over 40. ****

Jack and I rode home, me in fear of never moving my bowels again after eating that poutine. We rode about 14 miles, which was good. I rode faster than the week before, but not so fast. Jack rides a bike with Campagnolo gears. Campagnolo is like the Harley-Davidson of the bicycling world--their parts have a very distinctive sound. Campagnolo gears only makes its special noise when it is coasting, and I heard a lot of this noise yesterday while we were riding. I'd be pedaling my butt off, and Jack would be coasting.

Last night, my knee woke me up a few times with stiffness. I had a hard time rolling over without needing to stretch it out. I don't think I've had a hard time sleeping with my knee since a few weeks after the surgery. But nevertheless, I did sleep. And I am getting my Knack back.



* For those of you who haven't had a thirteen year old son in the past few years, Magic the Gathering is a card trading game.

** I just have to share this fun Cliff Claven "It's a little known fact..." story. Nate's Wings and Waffles is a great restaurant in SE Seattle. We eat there after the Boy has soccer games in the Rainier Beach neighborhood. Nate's Wings and Waffles is owned by former Garfield High School and NBA star Nate Robinson. The Boy has to run sprints for soccer, and he has been timing himself. Since he has been running alone, he doesn't know if his times are fast or slow. We googled 100 meter sprint times for boys his age for comparison. The Washington State Middle School track record for the 100 meter dash is held by Nate Robinson!

Fake Shape: Stationary Biking v. Real Biking

Last week, I got on my road bike for the first time since my skiing injury last December. I had been am an avid cyclist. (I am not sure which tense to use in that sentence yet.)

Last weekend, I rode about 13 miles and the next day I felt like I had done half a century (aka 50 miles). I felt the smallest changes in grade, and shifted gears constantly to adjust. I thought maybe I was tired after my first substantial trip and then I'd feel more energetic on the road later in the week.

Nope. I was pooped after a few short road rides this week. This is after spending all of the winter riding the stationary bike indoors for at least forty-five minutes a day. I had thought that riding on the road would be easy after all of my indoor work. Nope. Here I was, riding forty-five minutes a day and thinking I was getting into great shape. Before my accident, I used to exercise regularly--walking my dog, biking, hiking, skiing, doing yoga and whatnot, but I never made a point of getting forty-five minutes of cardio every day like I have been.

I felt like I had been riding a fake bike and I was getting into fake shape. Riding the road bike wasn't impossibly hard, but noticeably harder. I didn't want any kind of harder. I wanted to get on my bike and tear up the road. My exercise routine on the indoor bike for the past few months had been second rate compared to the real thing of riding on the road.

It was like I was eating margarine instead of butter, carob instead of chocolate. Drinking Sanka instead of Starbucks, Cook's instead of Veuve Clicquot. It was like finding out a ring had a cubic zirconia stone instead of a diamond, iron pyrite instead of gold. It was like I was playing with Flegos (i.e., fake legos) instead of Legos.

For the past few months, I had thought I was rocking it when I was really a slug. And my knee is talking to me again. The plum is back. My knee is stiff, my arms are sore from needing to steer and ice is my best friend again. It was bad and I was depressed.

I told Evan about my road biking experience, and he wasn't surprised.

"People ask me right after their surgery if they can ride a road bike and I tell them to stick the stationary bike for a reason," he said. "Baby steps. This recovery is all about baby steps."

Oy. And so it is. He is right, and I will continue to slog on the road.

Painting

I spent part of this morning painting the Boy's room with our college student-helper, Anita. We are going to be painting the second floor, which includes the kids' bedrooms plus the Lego Room. Anita just graduated, and I wanted her help before she finds a real job instead of her part-time job of doing odds and ends around my house, like folding laundry, emptying and loading the dishwasher, and organizing my basement. She is very efficient and organized, and she helped me purge the first floor of our house before we got new floors. She has no attachment to our stuff, so she can ask hard questions like, "Will you ever wear this again? Really?"  Last year, she helped me paint my stairwell, bedroom and office. Having a second set of hands makes time fly and the job get done twice as fast. Everyone needs an Anita.

I had booked Anita to help me with this a few weeks ago to fit in after her graduation activities. Sunday, Claire-Adele and I went and bought paint. Normally, I like to paint, but this weekend I wasn't looking too forward to it, and I couldn't figure out why. I started to get excited once I bought the paint and had it in the house. Anita is like a tornado--there is no procrastinating. When she arrives, we start to work. This is good. I might never have gotten around to painting the kids' rooms if I had to do it alone.*

Yesterday, Anita came over and we started organizing the Boy's room. Rather, she organized while I sat and got lost in reverie about three crib blankets we found in his closet, one from my dear friend Maggie who I used to work with years ago. Another blanket was from my former boss, and another was from our old neighbors in St. Louis, also called the McGuire's. See how hard it is? The time it took me to write those sentences was the time it took Anita to move half of the crap out of the Boy's room into the Lego room. See how much I need help? I'd still be up there crying over baby blankets.

We (I mean Anita) moved everything out of the Boy's room except his bed and dresser.

"Damn," said the Boy when he saw his Lego room filled with the contents of his bedroom. "I didn't know I had this much stuff. We have a 'Where's Waldo?' puzzle? We should do that sometime."

This morning, I was in a jolly mood about painting the upstairs. I had a physical therapy appointment at 8:00, and Anita and I would start painting when I got home. This was the first physical labor I've done since my skiing accident back in December, and I was looking forward to it. After I lost the School Board election last November, I had a list of home improvement projects I wanted to tackle, like getting new linoleum for the kitchen and bathrooms. Painting was on the list, but was shuttled to the back of the line when I tore my ACL. I finally felt good enough that I could handle the work.

I love painting because it a) makes the house looks so much better without back breaking work and b) I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I am done. It makes me wonder why I didn't paint these rooms sooner.

Why was I so grumpy today painting later in the morning? Anita is pleasant--that wasn't it. Now that I am getting back to normal, it makes me realize how limited I previously was. In many ways, I should be happy I am better, but in other ways this was a little bittersweet, heavy on the bitter. This is a measure of what I lost for six months. I could be zen about the past and be thankful for the time I spent incapacitated where I was forced to slow down and relax. I did a lot of sewing, a lot of reading and a lot of riding the stationary bike. I am fortunate my situation was temporary and not permanent.

But really, I am not one of those people who is happy when forced to sit still for a long time. I was reading the endnotes in The Sun, and there was a list of quotations about finding strength in adversity.    I am so cynical, I think about how better off Holocaust, Hurricane Katrina, and tsunami victims would be without that level of major adversity touching their lives. Can they survive after losing their homes and possibly families? Perhaps, but it will be hard, and to tell them bad things builds character is kind of bullshit. Maybe those platitudes were meant for first world people who don't have major problems, like scurvy, starvation and lack of accessible clean water.

Still, we survive traumas large and small. There is a young man at the YMCA who had a non-malignant tumor removed from his brain last week. He had to undergo two hours of neurosurgery. He is very athletic, and will only be out of a commission for a few weeks before he can return to normal activity. He looked at me and said, "It's not like my knee went out," nodding at my leg.

What? I thought. The dude has a brain tumor and he thinks he is better shape than me. That's nuts.

But maybe it wasn't. Maybe for a guy who has a job a the YMCA and lifts weights and does cardio everyday, losing and having reduced mobility for six months (before and after surgery) would be worse than a benign tumor. Maybe half of life is saying things aren't so bad.

So Anita and I painted the Boy's room, and it looked so fresh and new. All of the finger smudges and pencil marks and crayon marks and shoe scuffs were gone. I accomplished something I hadn't been able to do in a while. Sometimes you don't realize how bad something was that you were living with until you get the new and improved version. For the Boy, his room is now a blank canvas, empty, ready to be refilled.

"Damn," said the Boy impressed when he saw his clean, white walls. "Damn."


* "You have kids and a husband, right Lauren? Can't they help?" you are asking yourself. Yes, but Anita is way better. There is no yelling, complaining or insisting there is a better way to work when I work with Anita. (Well, you might have to ask her about that.)

Sorting, the Lego Room and My Left Knee

Elliptical Time: 5 minutes --took a while for my knee to make it around
Bike Time: 40 minutes 

There are lots of things that I used to be able to do before my skiing accident and knee injury that I am still working my way up to doing. Today, I hit a new milestone.

The Boy has a lego room. It isn't very big--it is part of a converted attic space next to the Boy's bedroom, which is also converted attic space. This is what the lego room looked like this morning:

Before

As you can see--or as you cannot see, there is a carpet under my son's 40,000 lego piece collection. I bought this rug before the Boy was born. It was a rug I had coveted from Pottery Barn kids for ages, and I finally bought it when it went on clearance. The floor in the room in St. Louis was awful, so I covered it with this rug.

Rug in the Boy's room in St. Louis

I don't mind clutter and mess. I would photograph my desk as Exhibit A for disorganization, but I don't want to. 

I do, however, mind wool moths. These are little moths that eat wool. I hate them.

Two horrible moths that are laying eggs in this rug. These moths are now dead.

These tiny bugs and their larva have made big holes in this rug. The best way to get rid of the bugs it to vacuum the rug, but the Legos first need to be cleaned up.

These are the moth holes.

The Boy got his first Lego set when he was four. By time he was five, he had several Lego sets. He is a builder and a rebuilder. Very few sets stay completed as designed. They get taken apart, re-organized and rebuilt in to a million other things. I am happy to support my son's Lego habit. Since he spent so much time in his Lego room, the way for me to spend time with him was to go to the Lego room. I am not much of a builder, so I became a sorter. I sorted his Legos by type, and put them in bins. Some of the bins were from an old Target toy shelf from Claire Adele's room. Others I bought at fancy organizing stores. He has a fishing tackle box to store tiny, one of a kind pieces. I also re-use plastic rice and ice cream containers for Legos.

Ice cream containers. I mostly bought the ice cream because I thought the packaging would be good for storing Legos. Seriously.

Sorting Legos became my hobby. It is a mindful/mindless activity like knitting or needlepoint, except I don't get a nice sweater or pillow at the end. Sorting Legos is more Sisyphean -- once you are done, the Legos get unsorted again and it starts all over, like knitting a sweater that becomes slowly unraveled while you work so you are never done. But the goal isn't to be "done." It is to make this massive collection accessible. We have downloaded instructions from sets he doesn't have and built them. He had books on building. And of course, he makes his own creations.

Yet, it was peaceful and cathartic to sort piles of Legos and have them easy to find. My sorting isn't beautiful, but it is calming. After I lost the School Board election, I was in the room sorting Legos. It was December, the week before my skiing accident. The sorting was not as relaxing as it usually was. Before, it was a productive mental escape. I could take a mental vacation and still accomplish something, even if it was small. Now, I don't have a pile of stressful work in front of me that I need to take a break from. Why was I sorting Legos now? Was this what my life was to become? Instead of making me feel better, I felt depressed.

I didn't know that was the last time I would sort Legos for months. While it might not seem so, sorting Legos is like a pilates/yoga class. There is lots of small movements that require bending, squatting, stretching, sitting crossed legged, and sitting and crawling on my knees. I really need that 150 degrees of flexion. I need to sit on the ground, stand up, move and get back on the floor continuously.And this floor is covered with sharp, plastic Legos, so I need to be careful about where and how I move. There is twisting and pivoting. I wasn't able to any of those activities since my accident. I had tried for about three minutes a few weeks ago, and it was a fail.

Today I went upstairs to check on something, and I noticed the moths. I thought it was time to give it a shot, to see if my knee were up to sorting. I put my shoes on for the task. Arguably, the only thing worse than stepping on a Lego in bare feet is stepping in dog poop, althought dog poop generally doesn't draw blood. My ability to maneuver in a small space around small things isn't where it used to be. I didn't want to trip or twist my leg if I stepped on something accidentally. Even wearing shoes, I almost lost my balance once when I didn't step in the right place.

I survived. I had the Boy come and help with this, as it is his Lego room. I don't think it is fair to saddle him with my anal-retentive sorting scheme, but it was nice to get his assistance with simple work. He didn't have to sort a pile of a thousand pieces into studs, cheese wedges and 2x2 talls. The goal was to vacuum to kill the moths, and at some point I skip the sorting and scoop the leftover pieces into bins so I can drive my Dyson around the room. The Boy was the scooper today.

Tub of mini-figure heads. They look like garbanzo beans.

I didn't put "Cleaning the Lego Room" on my list of activities that I wanted to do after my surgery, but it is a milestone. I wasn't as flexible as I wanted to be, but I made enough progress. 

After

Retail Therapy and Slowly

My dad said he has resorted to buying stuff when he was getting down about my mother's Alzheimer's. He read in a book that caregivers should get out of the house and do something for themselves, even if it is small. He attended to my mother twenty-four hours a day, but occasionally he'd sneak out to the hobby shop and get a remote controlled airplane. I think he has acquired dozens of planes and drones and helicopters in the past few years.

While I am not taking care of my mom (I live 2,000 miles away) and I am in no way caring the burden my father is carrying, I do have a little bit of guilt that I can't do more to help him. In honor of my father, I made my own stress purchase today. Thanks to the Boy, I am a Lego fan. Like him, I look for sets with interesting pieces and parts. Birds, eggs, and an "Anger Management Class" sticker? A pig with a tattoo riding a Hog? I'm in.

I like game, but I have no desire to see this movie. Thank goodness my kids are at the age where we can see movies with real actors instead of only cartoons.

I also bought a bottle topper that seals the bubbles in leftover sparkling wine. I also bought a bottle of sparkling wine, not for celebratory purposes. QFC had sparkling wine on the endcaps and I thought it looked good.

I am also doing a lap dog therapy. Fox is happy to serve.

My dad does not have a direct communication style. He told me my mom is refusing to eat, but I had to look stuff up on the internet last night to determine she might be near the end of her life. I know he doesn't want to worry me, but still. Last night, I read on NIH's National Institute on Aging's website that not eating is possible imminent sign of death for people with dementia. It is possible my mom is dying, and giving her a feeding tube is out of the question. The NIH and my mom's living will are both against feeding tubes for people dying of Alzheimer's.

My mom could die in the next week or two. Or, she could live for another six months or two years. We don't know.  My dad said people who are in hopsice do better than people who aren't in hospice. I thought he was being optimista until my physical therapist told me that hospice patients have a longer three month life expectancy than similar patients who aren't in hospice. I guess my dad heard correctly.

It is hard to decide what kind of mode to be in: the panic, move fast mode, or the quiet, calm, take things as they come mode. Last night, everything started to move in slow motion for me as I figured out this could be the end. I knew Alzheimer's was fatal, but I also knew it is a long, drawn out way to die. I was more worried about her living in a catatonic state for years than her dying soon. I guess I am going to take this slowly.

Alcatraz and Sophie's Choice

We heading out to San Francisco for a few days during Spring Break.  When we got the airplane tickets, we also bought baseball tickets and tickets to the San Francisco Ballet.

The kids want to see Alcatraz, but we didn't buy tickets.  We figured we'd get them while we were there, maybe after we checked the weather forecast and could see which day had the highest chance of sunshine.  (This step is likely unnecessary, as California is suffering from a drought.)

One of Jack's colleagues lived in SF a few years ago, and recommended getting Alcatraz tickets before we go.  Twenty plus years ago when I was in SF, I walked up and bought tickets, with a wide choice of dates and times.  I figured we were going midweek in the middle of spring, and tourism would not be at its peak. This is not July 4th weekend or some other major travel holiday.

I was wrong.  I went online today and all of the tickets for Alcatraz for this week were sold out.  I found open tickets, but not four.  At one point, I found two groups of two tickets at different times.  When I couldn't find four tickets for the same date and time, I thought about splitting the trip.  I could take one kid one day; Jack could take the other at the other time.  By time I figured that out, there were only two tickets left.  My heart sank.

The kids really wanted to see Alcatraz.  I thought it was cool when I saw it 20+ years ago, and if nothing else, the boat ride is nice.  Alcatraz is owned by the National Parks Service, so it is a reasonably educational and historical experience.  Plus, there is an art exhibit by Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist who believes in human rights, which we would also miss.  (And he uses Lego as one of his mediums!)

I vexed, and left the two tickets in my online shopping cart, and walked the dog.  Should I get the two tickets, and do a Sophie's choice of which child could go?  Should I violate the Alcatraz rules and let my kids go alone, even though kids under 18 need to be accompanied by an adult?  Could Claire Adele pass for 18?  One of my neighbors walking her dog in the park thought that was a possibility.

I went home and told the kids about the tickets.  Both kids wanted to go, and thought we should get the two tickets, and figure it out later.  The Boy said I could go with Claire Adele, and he would go bowling with Jack.

I went online, and thought I'd try one more time to get four tickets together.  I hit the "Continue Shopping" button before I went to the checkout.

Bingo!  Four tickets at the same time on the same day.  Moral of the story:  It pays to keep hitting the refresh button.

BrickCon 2014

Yesterday I went to BrickCon.  Yay!  It is an annual Lego convention held in the Seattle Center.  We started going when the Boy was in diapers and was propped up on Jack's shoulders.  When the Boy was two to three, he watched a mechanical ball contraption for 45 minutes, mesmerized.

Here are some of the super cool creations.  Enjoy!  In the meantime, I've got to get started on my Les Miserables themed buildings for next year.

Tiger Nest Monastery.  Very cool.  150,000 bricks.

Space Needle with golden orange top.  I wonder where they got that color?

I have no idea what Mouse Guard is, but this is cute and clever.

Mosaic Lego

Super cool castle.

Waiting for the Great Pumpkin.

Tardis from Dr. Who.

This one is called "Clean Up Aisle 12."  A dinosaur rampages a grocery store.

An Orca made out of mostly Duplo. 

The backside of the Tiger's Nest.

A few Lego fans.

Passion and Lego

The Boy has been on a First Lego League team since first grade and he is now in sixth.  He is on a team with a handful of kids he has known since kindergarten.  There are two parts to Lego Club. The first part is the challenge where they have to create an innovative solution to a problem based on the theme of the year.  This year's theme is World Class: Learning Unleashed.  Teams have to create an innovative solution to help kids learn.  The second part is the robot game.  First Lego League creates a lego obstacle course and the team has to design a robot to accomplish tasks.

As part of the challenge, the Boy and I watched the TED Talk "How Schools Kill Creativity" by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D.*  This TED Talk is the most popular of all time.  He talks about how when Gillian Lynne was a little girl, she couldn't sit still.  Her mother brought her to a psychologist who told her that her daughter didn't have a problem:  "She is a dancer.  Send her to ballet school."  Years later, Gillian danced for the Royal Ballet and then became a choreographer.

I heard that Robinson (Sir Robinson?  Sir Ken?)  wrote The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.  I went to the U District library and picked up a copy, hoping to find out what I direction I should take now that my volunteer job is over.  A friend of mine posted an article on Facebook about how to find your passion.  One question to ask yourself is "What makes you forget to eat and poop?"  (I suppose cooking could be a passion that would not create a proper response to this this question, but I digress.)  While I am in my forties and figuring this out, I am not worried.  I've accepted that my life takes a non-linear path, the unlike Jack, I didn't know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life when I was sixteen.

The next day, The Boy had Lego Club.  The Boy is really into Lego Club.  (He should have his own blog of stuff he has built out of Lego.)  As such, I am one of the co-coaches of his team, knowing that if I want to keep this going, I am going to have to step up.  Which is fine.  My co-coach though the Boy should have some solo time building the robot.  I was worried it would take to long for him to make progress if we only meet once a week.  We decided the Boy should work on the robot during the week.  The Boy brought the robot home along with a box of Legos to finish building.

Like the little girl who couldn't not dance, the Boy is a child who cannot not build.  When we came home, he went straight to his Lego room and got cracking on the robot.  I was not surprised.  I was not surprised when I had to call him three times to come to lunch.  Three hours of Lego Club wasn't enough.  Here I have a eleven year old boy who is so focused, and I can't figure out what to do next.

Jack and I decided to take a walk, and asked the kids to join us.  It was a beautiful day sunny and in the 80's; probably the last night day were going to have in a long time.  We went to Marsh Island and brought Fox along.  The Seahawks were playing the Broncos, reviving the Super Bowl of earlier this year when the Seahawks emerged victorious.  On our walk, Jack occasionally checked the score.  We got in the car to drive home, and Jack put the game on the radio.  The game was tied 20 to 20, and went into overtime.  When we walked into the house, Jack went immediately to the television to watch the end of the game.

The Boy went upstairs to finish building his robot.

* If I am not British, do I have to call him "Sir?"  Just wondering.

Stay-at-Home-Mom of the Month: Alice Finch

This afternoon, I took the kids to see Beyond the Brick: A Lego Brickumentary at the Seattle International Film Festival.  Rather, the kids took me to see it.  They saw it Saturday with John, and today was my turn to take them.*  The Boy is a huge KFOL (Kid Fan of Lego), and along the way, I found that I have warm spot in my heart for these little plastic bricks.

One of the AFOLs (Adult Fan of Lego) featured in the film is Alice Finch.  She is from the Seattle area, and was at the screening.  She is famous at BrickCon and has won awards for her humungous Hogwarts from Harry Potter and Rivendell from Lord of the Rings.  (Check out her flickr page.)

I took these pictures at BrickCon in Seattle last fall.  Sorry this one of Hogwarts is blurry.  It is hard to get a clear shot with all of the people there.

Alice Finch's Rivendell

Rivendell

After the movie, I asked what she did before becoming an expert Lego builder, thinking she might have been an architect or engineer.  She was a middle school teacher, and her father was a builder.  She learned how to read blueprints growing up.

"I am a stay-at-home-mom," she said.  "I build after my kids go to bed until I crash."  She started building when she was ten, but started again when her kids got interested in Lego.

Alice's son, Thorin, was in the movie.  His line: "My mom is the best builder."

I am giving the first Stay-at-Home-Mom of the Month award to Alice.  She seems to have found a great creative outlet for the limited downtime of motherhood.  I admire her stick-to-itiveness to create projects on such a large scale, and then share them with other people--both kids and adults.  Lots of moms work on projects, but these are impressive.

I imagine it takes some coin to build a 400,000 piece design (Hogwarts) and a 200,000 piece design (Rivendell).  I imagine she has spent lots of money on these projects.  To which I say:  Huzzah!  If she comes from a family with that kind of disposable income, why not use the funds to create art, something she can share with other kids and families and bring delight?  She could be buying shoes or jewelry or remodeling her house for the 8th time.  A giant Lego Hogwarts?  Way cooler.

While I am sure her kids love her magnificent Hogwarts, I hope it finds a permanent home where it can be on display, like The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida, or Legoland in California.

* I have no problem with seeing the same movie two days in a row.  I saw Strictly Ballroom two days in a row at the Chicago International Film Festival back in the 1990s.

Offline, Salt and my Madeleines

I've been offline for the past two weeks.  The kids had mid-winter break, and then week after was crazy.  During the break, the Boy's Lego Club made it to the First Lego League State Championship in Ellensburg, WA. We also skied for a few days.  All good, but we have been eating out.  A lot.  As a result, I've eaten so much salt in the past two weeks the Atlantic Ocean is jealous.

Speaking of salt... Last night my daughter was skiing and John was working, so the Boy and I ordered pizza for dinner.  We usually get Delfino's, which is a Chicago style place that serves a deep dish spinach.  This is only place west of the Kennedy Expressway that serves deep dish like this.  Anyhow, at the Boy's request, we did not order from Delfino's. We ordered from the national chain that serves this garlic dipping sauce on the side of their pizzas.  Ingredients: soybean oil, water, salt, and then a bunch of chemicals.  I was at the AWP Conference yesterday when a woman read a poem about desire and lack of control written by a prison inmate.  The way this guy feels about cocaine, I feel about this garlic sauce.  This morning, I went to the refrigerator in the basement and ate a piece of cheese bread covered in the sauce for breakfast.  I didn't use a plate.  I just ate it over the box.  Maybe this sauce won't ruin my life and cause me to lose my family or end up in prison, but it could clog my arteries and cause some serious hypertension.  I know this sacue is bad for me, but I could not resist.  I was a victim to its powers.  

And then there was Potbelly for lunch.  Potbelly used to be a one shop operation on Lincoln Ave in Lincoln Park in Chicago, very close to where I lived in my twenties.  The story goes that Potbelly started as a antique shop in the 1970s that started making lunch for its customers.  Soon, the sandwich business took over the antique sales.  Anyhow, John and I used to go to Potbelly on a regular basis for lunch.  On a beautiful summer afternoon, the line would sometimes snake around the place and out the door.  I would get a ham and swiss baked on a hogie roll with mayo, lettuce, tomato, onion, oil and Italian seasonings.  John and I would usually split a bag of chips and a milkshake.  Sometimes we'd just go for a milkshake.  

Now Potbelly is a chain, and there is one on Pike and 4th in downtown Seattle.  This ham sandwich is my madeleine, sending me back through a vortex of time to my twenties, living a yuppie's life in Chicago.  When I had time to wait a half an hour for a sandwich and not worry if one of my children would meltdown from lack of food.  When I could slam a milkshake and not feel like I had to compensate by detoxing on only lettuce, rice and tea for the next two days.  While I love this place, yesterday I left feeling like I was pregnant with a ham sandwich and oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.  Those days of freedom weekends and high metabolism are gone.  

That didn't stop me from returning today.  I wonder how many times Marcel Proust returned to his madeleines.  Did they always bring him back to his childhood, or at some point, did he just remember the last time he had the cookie?  Did he ever decide a cookie was just a cookie and leave it at that?

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.