Purple Mountain Majesty & Strike That

Yesterday, I drove home from Montana. The drive from Kalispell to St. Regis is the most beautiful drive I have ever taken in my life, and I have been to New Zealand which is amazing. The scenery was breathtaking. I now know where "purple mountain majesty" comes from. I didn't take any pictures because I was driving, but here is a map of my route, in case you want to know. The drive goes along Flathead Lake, through plains and then along a river in the valley between mountains.

My manager had been teasing me that these trips to see the Boy are vacation.

"No, this was not a vacation," I'd say, thinking of the hours of therapy I'd been through.

"You just said you took the most beautiful ride ever! How is that not vacation?"

He has a point.

How do I reconcile the beauty and the pain of this trip, hold both in my hands and heart at the same time? That the Boy is doing better even though he has a long way to go before he is functional? That I love him even though Saturday he ignored me which pissed me off and made me feel like I was an inadequate parent? Today, I sent a message to my friends I met at the parents weeks for the Boy's Wilderness Camp. One of the women calls us "Sister Mamas" which I love. I wrote a note to them saying "I am glad he is getting help." I was going to add "but I wish he didn't need it." I struck that from the note to these women. I've decided to not add this caveat to every conversation.

I am trying to incorporate the Boy's mental health struggle into my day-to-day and still maintain my sanity. When I was in St. Regis, there is a gift shop. I found a journal that looked like something I would have bought in seventh grade, but it spoke to me. I bought four: one for me and three for the other Sister Mamas.

Three weeks ago, I would have thought this cheerful little bird was full of shit. Now after starting to read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning and learning at Wilderness that negative emotions only last thirty seconds to three minutes if you just sit with them, I might learn to find happiness while the Boy is away.

Gratitude helps, too. I am grateful for Jason, one of the Boy's supervisors. I am grateful for the entire state of Montana, for hosting a place like this boarding school, and people who dedicate their lives to helping kids like the Boy find their way.

London -- Fashion, Or Momma Suits Up

Before Claire-Adele and I went to London, we went shopping.

"Why do you need to go shopping before the trip?" I asked.

"I need clothes to wear," she said.

"So?" I said. "We can shop there. That is the cool part about London. Shopping."

"I need clothes to wear," she said.

Fine. We went shopping two days before the trip. We hit Nordstrom Rack downtown one day after work for both of us. If she wants to go shopping at the Rack, that is fine with me. What she doesn't realized that this opportunity of shopping in one of the leading fashion cities in the world mixed with her mother's generosity and credit card will only come but once, maybe twice, in her lifetime.

So we went to the Rack downtown. While she was shopping, I was poking around. I wasn't planning on buying anything because I was going to shop in London.

Until. I. Saw. The. Designer. Racks. I felt like Bilbo Baggins when he enters Lonely Mountain and sees all of the elves gold. Is all of this for me?

I thought I'd looked through the racks when I saw It. It was destiny. We were meant to be together. Me and a black St. John black wool Chanel style jacket. When I tried on this jacket, I didn't feel like a million bucks. I felt like five to ten million. The jacket was one third of the original price, but still astronomical.

I brought it home, I showed it to Jack and the Boy. The Boy, who is a big fan of Neil Patrick Harris's Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother. The gay married family man with two kids plays a very well dressed scoundrel and a womanizer. Barney's tag line is "Suit up."

Even the Boy was impressed at the cut and fit of this jacket.

"Momma suits up," said Jack.

I packed my bags, including in two dresses I bought of the bargain rack at The Rack and one dress I had in my closet for eight years and never wore. I am not one of those people who buys clothes they never wear, mainly because I am not that adventurous to buy anything that I might possibly feel the least bit uncomfortable wearing.

And then we left for London.

When we were there, Claire-Adele suggested we get off at a random Underground stop and explore. I picked Notting Hill. On our way to the restaurant, we walked by a thrift shop with a window full of fancy shoes. We had to go in. Turns out this "thrift shop" only sells designer stuff.

Not in my size otherwise I'd own them.

Yeah, those are Prada.

Claire-Adele started looking at the clothes. She found a dove gray sweater with ruffles along the front button area. It would be a perfect sweater to wear in the fall on the eastern seaboard. It was 70 pounds, so I checked the label.

Armani.

This was my kind of thrift shop.

A few days later, we were in line to see the Harry Potter play and we talked to some women from Florida.

"You have to go to Kensington Palace. They have an exhibit of Princess Diana's dresses," she said.

So we did. This is something Jack and the Boy would not want to see.

The dress she wore to dance with John Travolta.

Could you see me in this suit? I could! Love it.

She wore this to a fundraiser in Chicago for Northwestern. Go U NU!

There more more clothes in the rest of the exhibit. I don't Jack and the Boy would have had much fun here, either.

This is a replica outfit made out of what appeared to be Tyvek or some other industrial paper.

I love this outfit. 

These dresses were designed to show off the fabric. Like a billboard.

Emeralds

Diamonds. This was valued at 1.4M pounds and was used to pay the estate tax for someone's estate.

So my clothes aren't as awesome as Princess Diana's. No one's clothes are, which is why these clothes are in a museum. Nevertheless, Claire-Adele and I were at the Tower of London, and this woman stopped me and told me she loved my dress.

"This is the first time I've worn it," I told her. "It was in my closet for eight years."

"Sometimes those things are the best finds," she said.

Even in the Tower of London, we saw some cool fashions that Jack and the Boy might have foud interesting.

This one is cool.

Add caption

London -- Low Maintenance

Forgive me for being off my blog for the past several days. Claire-Adele and I are on a mother-daughter trip to London before she leaves for college in less than a month. When Claire-Adele was ten, she and I made a trip to London. Now, she is eighteen.

What was she most excited about for this trip?

Drinking.

Every night so far, we've had a glass of wine, beer, prosecco, cider or sangria with dinner. As a very lightweight drinker, I am feeling a little sloshed after a week.

"I don't think I'll have an addictive personality," said Claire-Adele. She's probably right, yet there were nights when she drank more than I did. Which means she finished her drink and I didn't.

"I'm going to be responsible," she said as I bought her a 14 pound glass of champagne, hoping this would be a good investment in her learning to control her alcohol at college. Hoping, because if I am wrong, she cold be screwed.

Why did we come here instead of going someplace new? I wrestled with this, and here are my thoughts:

1. It is London. Seriously, how could it be bad? I love big cities.
2. They speak English and the food is predictable.

Most importantly,

     3.  This is an easy planning trip. London is the perfect low-maintenance destination for high maintenance people.

Compare to our two week trip to New Zealand a few years ago. It took us months to plan the logistics of that trip. We stayed (if I am remembering right) seven different towns on two islands -- Auckland, Pohara, some cute spa town with a hot springs water park, Christchurch, Queenstown, Manapouri, and Hamilton. We took three plane rides within New Zealand.

For this trip, all I had to do was book theater tickets (Ham for me, Harry for Claire-Adele), book airline tickets, and find a place to stay. In that order. Done. I was ready. Need to get from destination to destination? Buy an Oyster card for the Underground. Done. Easy-peasey, lemon squeezy.

Jack and I went to brunch last weekend with Carla and her husband who met in London while they were working there.

"What are you going to do while you are there?" she asked.

"I dunno," I said. Then she told me 300 things we could do, and I wrote down about 150 of them. I didn't open a guide book until the third day of our trip. Why? Because there is so much to do here that in Central London you can walk five minutes in any direction and find a castle, palace, museum or place of cultural or historical significance. With the Internet and a printer, you can find train schedules and print tickets for taking tours of Parliament or Bletchley Park.

Plus, Claire-Adele already had a ton of ideas in her mind of what she wanted to see and do, which made my life much easier.

Can you imagine how little I would write if I had to plan a trip, too?

Egads.

More Skiing

Today was day four of skiing at Whistler, and I survived. A few observations in no particular order.

• My feet are cold. Tonight we watched a Big Air slope style competition while standing on the sidelines instead of in the plaza on a big screen. Standing on the sidelines means standing in the snow.

View of the plaza from the sidelines where people stand and their feet don't get as cold, but their view isn't as awesome.

A skier gets pulled up to the jump via snowmobile.

The landing for the Big Air competition

• Weather can change on a dime on a big mountain.

View from a run yesterday

View from the top of the run two runs later

View from the gondola as I downloaded yesterday

View without raindrops

Today, two inches of powder accumulated...during lunch.

• I wish Jack had taken more vacation when I wasn't working. Now that I am working and am not free to travel at will, his interest in traveling with the family has gone up. I am not complaining, just wish he would have thouht of this before I returned to the 9-to-5. My company has a reasonably generous vacation plan, so I am not complaining about that. I just wished he used more of his vacation time when I was around. As much as I like my job, breaks are necessary.
• If I lost some weight, I'd have less mass, and then I'd ski slower without having to work at skiing slower. I am the only person in the world who thinks skiing slower is better than skiing all out in a straight line.
• I feel like an old lady when I ski sometimes. Skiing is a time for weird thoughts. I realized that with this next birthday, I will be the same as my grandma when she became a grandmother. Oy.  Fucking. Vey. I could ask my dad to confirm, but I think I am right. Actually, I don't really want to know. And my mother was not an old grandma. She was a regular age grandma for the time.
• Just when I feel like a grandma and think I am too old for this shit, I go in the lodge and see a bunch of seventy year old men covered in snow who have just gotten off some gnarly run. (Note: I will not be seventy on my next birthday, in case that might be confusing.) How do I know they are doing gnarly runs if they are the in lodge with me? I don't see them on the green runs I am on. There are women that age out there skiing, but far fewer. Why? Are women that age too smart to ski?
• The Boy is sending it. His sports medicine physician night not be too happy, but whatev. He's happy.

You Have Nothing to Prove, and Where Did I Go Right?

I need to remember this the next time I do anything. I have nothing to prove to anyone ever, including myself. Most especially myself.

You are welcome for this hard earned wisdom I learned today.

Yesterday was wet, so wet there was a rainbow.

I am with my family on Spring Break in Whistler. This was not my first choice for vacation, but everyone else wanted to go here, especially the Boy. To me, a big ski vacation is like going to Disneyland--the only reason I would go is because my kids want to go. And my kids have never wanted to see Disneyland or Disney World, so I dodged those bullets. When he was younger, the Boy wanted to see Legoland, the masculine version of Disneyland -- all building materials and no tulle in sight. When Claire-Adele was ten, she wanted to go to London and I was totally hip to that.

I wouldn't be complaining about skiing if I wasn't such a laggard compared to my family. Eight years ago, I was the best skier in my family, as the kids didn't know how to ski and Jack was meh. Jack and I thought skiing would be a great way to get out of the house in the gray and gloomy winters in the Pacific Northwest. Little did I know then my kids would take to skiing like rats to a sewer. Where did I go right?

I am not complaining about going to Whistler for Spring Break. I am complaining about going to Whistler for Spring Break again. Seriously, I'd like to go someplace else for vacation. My friends on Facebook are in Mexico, Iceland, Hawaii, and Palm Springs. Claire-Adele's boyfriend went to Europe. I would like to be in any of those places. I have other friends who are in Ohio, Iowa and Boston for vacation. The midwest is looking good. The friend in Mexico is remarried and I am FB friends with his new wife, which is nice. I was so jealous of her pictures. What I am going to have to do to get a vacation in Mexico where I can sit on the beach and/or poolside while someone brings me cervezas? Get divorced, remarried, and find someone who wants to go to Mexico for vacation? That's a bit extreme, if you ask me.

Not exactly a bluebird day.

Instead of floating in the ocean in Maui, I am burning my thighs, hamstrings and glutes in very wintery weather. This morning, the snow at 6,000 was firm. Lower down in the middle of the afternoon, it was heavy and wet. Very heavy and very wet. And the runs here are long. Very long. Which means unless I stopped and rested, my legs got really tired. Pre-ACL tear, I loved it when my thighs burned when I skied. Post-ACL tear, I freak out when my legs burn.

A few runs after lunch, I left my family on Blackcomb and I went back to Whistler on the Peak-to-Peak. Whistler was blustery. Not regular blustery, but mountain blustery. I decided to try to the snow lower on the mountain, which was--as mentioned before--heavy and wet. The Eskimos must have a name for this shit, but likely not. Or they do now with the global warming. They probably call it something like snow that should melt if it weren't for the vast amount of it keeping it cold itself. My daughter called it mashed potato snow. This was more like mud snow, except it was fast. I hated this snow.

More than I hated this snow, I hated myself for thinking I could get down. At the mid-station, I could have ridden the gondola back down. There was even a nice sign "Tired? Cold? Ride the Gondola down!" Did I listen to the sign? No. I thought if I rested a bit my legs would feel better and I could make it down. So I rested. Nevermind my legs were pooped. Nevermind I asked some old timer on mono-ski what the snow was like, and he said "Just as bad as this here, except worse."

Did I listen to my legs, the sign at the gondola and an expert old guy skier?

No. I did not.

I can make it down, I told myself.

But you want to ski another day, I told myself back.

You did it yesterday and it was a piece of cake, I told myself again. And the snow doesn't look that bad. It could be fine.

Alright, I told myself. I can do this.

Are you sure? There is no shame in taking the gondola down, thought my sensible, sane, conservative self. You've already skied down 2,800 vertical feet. That's enough.

You can handle another 1,000 vertical feet, I told myself. Come on. What are you, some kind of a wuss? Besides, it will be fun.

Fun. Right. I wouldn't talk to my best friend like that, but I talk to myself like that. That is messed up. What is more messed up is that no one else was there pushing me to go down. As much as I'd like to, I cannot blame Jack, Claire-Adele, or the Boy. I brought this whole disaster on myself.

The snow was a mess. When I made it down the first turn, I seriously thought about marching back up. There was one steep spot that wasn't too steep except for the shit condition of the snow. I had to side step down. I had no pride. I was snowplowing part of it. Evan, my physical therapist, would tell me I was good at recruiting other muscles to do the work in my physical therapy, which is not a good thing for physical therapy when you are trying to re-activate your quadriceps. Recruiting other muscles was fantastic today when I was trying to get down the hill.

All of this makes me forget how much fun I have skiing. Skiing is like the little girl with little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When it is good, it is very, very good. But when it is bad, it horrid.

We only have three more days here before we head back to Seattle. Tomorrow, I will listen to my sensible self.

Views from Peak-to-Peak

The World Traveler and The Water Bottle

Claire-Adele is quite the traveler. At the age of seventeen, she has been to every continent except South America and Antarctica. Image our surprise when we were at SeaTac last Thursday morning at 4:00 a.m. for our 5:50 flight to New York and she got tagged in security with a not empty water bottle.

"It had less than three ounces of water," she said. "You are allowed three ounces."

Not in a liter sized bottle.

"They let me bring water on a plane in Dubai," she said.

The airport in Dubai isn't run by TSA.

This was Claire-Adele's special water bottle. I had found it on the sidelines of one of the Boy's soccer games when I was the team mom in charge of picking up their lost and leftover crap. No one claimed the blue Nalgene bottle so it sat in our cabinet next to the rest of our tall, skinny, bicycle water bottles, lonely and unloved until one Claire-Adele adopted it.

"Where did you get this bottle?" she asked. "I love it. Everyone at camp has a Nalgene."

Shortly thereafter, this bottle was covered in camp stickers and she carried it with her everywhere. It had traveled with her to New York for Spring Break, and to camp for a month this summer where she was a summer intern.

Her backpack had made it through the x-ray, but it was stopped because they thought one of her books was a laptop. When the twenty-something (maybe even nineteen-something) TSA guy, fresh on the four a.m. shift, saw the backpack, he pulled Claire-Adele in her lululemon tights and jacket over to the side to dig through her bag. The book was fine. The water bottle was not.

Jack, the Boy and I didn't hear the conversation between Claire-Adele and the TSA guy, but we saw him grab her bottle. Ugh, I thought as he walked away with her bottle. She loved that bottle. Oh well. I thought of the many water bottle graveyards I had seen at entry ways to x-ray scanners at airports. Large plastic tubs, filled with dead water bottles. I remember seeing families chug water or gatorade in line, just to keep their bottles. We did once at an airport, passed the bottle around until it was empty so it wouldn't float away in the TSA liquid-filled water bottle garbage pile.

The three of us waited for Claire-Adele to move it along, but she stayed at the TSA table with her backpack open.

"Let's go," Jack said.

"I am waiting for my water bottle," she said.

What? No, no, no. Honey, he is going to dump it in the trash.

"No, he is going to empty my water and bring me my bottle back," she said.

What?! The three of us stared at her in disbelief. She didn't cry or nash her teeth or anything at this guy. She acted it like it was perfectly normal for a TSA agent to take her bottle back to the front of the line, dump the water, send it back through the x-ray machine and bring it back to her.

Is life unfair? Yes it is, but sometimes it is unfair in our favor. It pays to be young and hot.

New York City

I have a confession to make. I used to be afraid of New York City. For years, I avoided it.

I know there lots of people who are afraid of NYC, but most of them live in rural areas where the largest crowd they have ever seen has been at the State Fair. I lived in suburban Chicago until I was twelve when my family moved to Columbus, Ohio. I lived in Lincoln Park and worked in the Sears Tower in my twenties. Even after living in an urban area for a decade, I was still intimidated by the Big Apple. I was afraid I wouldn't know how to ride the subway. I was worried that I'd look like someone not from New York, that my clothes would scream "Tourist!" I was worried the people would be rude. I was afraid I'd get pickpocketed.

My family went to New York this week to visit colleges with Claire Adele. My well-traveled daughter loved Paris, London, San Francisco and Toyko. She hated Chicago because she thought it smelled like garbage. And yet, she had her heart set on going to college in New York City even though she had never been there. She thinks Chicago smells bad? She didn't know that the garbage in New York City is left in bags on the street to be picked up be sanitation workers in the middle of the night. In nicer neighborhoods, the garbage is neatly stacked up by the building superintendents and placed in color coordinating bags alongside the street. I should have taken a picture of the garbage on Park Avenue. It was double bagged with a clear bag on the outside. It was as if their garbage was designed by Paper Source or some upscale gift wrap and stationery store that I have never heard of.

We needed to make a trip to the City that Never Sleeps before we signed her up for four years and she would then discover that most of New York smells like garbage and urine, just like Chicago.

I had been dreading this trip. I was looking forward to the Washington, D.C. part, but not the NYC part. I was afraid of New York City not because of the smell, but because my uncle who lives in New Jersey made me terrified of it years ago. I was in New Jersey for work, and my aunt and uncle brought me into Manhattan for dinner.

"Don't make eye contact with anyone," he said. "Don't look at anyone." I didn't own a car at the time, and the only way I got around Chicago was via public transportation. I knew how to be aware of my surroundings, but I wasn't paranoid. I had encountered hundreds of people with mild to severe mental illness on busses and trains. We had a small coterie of homeless men who camped at the corner of Clark and Belden for years. Everyone in my neighborhood knew the "Spare Change" guy. Like the other vagabonds, Spare Change was harmless. The scary part of Chicago wasn't the occasional bipolar homeless guy, but the sociopath who raped and murdered a young woman in her apartment in my neighborhood. That was what scared the crap out of me.

(My roommate Kelli and I had a close encounter with a possible Jack the Ripper years ago. A guy with shaggy brown hair and a navy blazer pounded on our door telling us he needed to use our phone. When we looked through the peephole, he had his arms up on our door and his head down so we couldn't see his face. My spidey sense went into hyper-drive, and my heart was about to explode in terror.

"I don't think we let him in," Kelli said rather calmly as I was imagining the dangers lurking on the other side of the door.

"I don't think so either," I said as I calculated whether I should call the cops first or grab a knife for self-defense. We made it known that there were two of us there, and the guy left the building on his own after a minute when we didn't open the door.)

I digress.

New York smells horrible, but I loved it anyway. I am so shocked that it took me so long to want to visit it. It is just like Chicago, only bigger. The subway was fine--just like riding the El in Chicago. Everyone dresses however they want to dress, and no one seems to care or notice. The ninety-year-old woman at the MoMA guest desk was chatty and told us she loved Seattle. She told me I had a beautiful daughter and handsome son. We saw Come from Away again, and it was still brilliant. When we saw it a year and a half ago in Seattle, I told my son he was lucky to see a Broadway play before it got to Broadway. And now we saw it on Broadway.

I kind of hope my daughter goes to college here so I can visit at least once a year. I'll get tickets to shows, check out museums, and ride the subway.

9/11 Memorial

9/11 Memorial

Central Park -- Umpire Rock

View from the Empire State Building

Cannoli that came in a box with red and white twine

Paris S__ and Vancouver

A few days ago, I was driving the Boy home from soccer practice.

"Are you going to get a soccer jersey in France?" I asked. "Maybe one from Paris St. Germain?"

"Maybe," he said.

"I don't know what their jerseys look like," I said, so he googled it and showed me at a stoplight.

"When I google 'Paris S,' it came up with 'Paris St. Germain,' 'Paris Shooting,' and 'Paris Syndrome,'" he said. Jesus, I thought.

"What's Paris Syndrome?" I asked.

"What happens to tourists who are excited to go to Paris and then are extremely disappointed," he said. Egads. That is not what I need the Boy to look up. This will be our first big urban vacation as a family. Normally we go to places where there are mountains, beaches and/or hiking. I am a little nervous of how he'll think of Paris. He isn't a city Boy.

Fast forward to yesterday.

"I am looking forward to going to Vancouver," Jack said yesterday morning before we got in the car to drive to Paris. He was the only one.

We left yesterday for our trip to France, except we didn't leave for France, we left for Vancouver, British Columbia. While Vancouver is a great city and I like visiting it, I just wanted to go straight to Paris.

Vancouver is a short hop and a jump from Seattle, and wow--all of a sudden you are plopped into the middle of a cosmopolitan town.* There are great mountain views, great water views, great parks, great restaurants and great shopping. Yay! It is awesome. When I first came here when Claire Adele was in first grade, I couldn't believe I had missed out on this city my whole life. When we first moved to Seattle in 2004, I was afraid of the hassle of the border crossing, just as I was afraid that I didn't know how to ride a ferry to the San Juan Islands. In both cases, I got over it when I was invited by friends to go both places.

I digress. We are in Vancouver. The kids have lost count of how many times we have been here, which is kind of cool.

Yesterday morning, Jack said he was looking forward to our brief trip to Vancouver before we head to Paris. He was the only one. He worked all weekend and overnight Wednesday, so I was doing most of the pre-trip planning and packing. It was bizarre to pack for the drive to Vancouver and then the flight to Paris. This kids didn't know what to put in their backpacks. I brought a million books, knowing I'll leave half of them in the car at the Vancouver airport.

Why are we in Vancouver if we are going to Paris? Because it was significantly cheaper to fly out of Van to Paris than from Seattle. The Canadian dollar is super weak, and I am assuming fewer Canadians want to take international trips when their currency is in the toilet.

"But Lauren, even if it is cheaper, there is a cost," said my friend Sangita who is spending three weeks in Germany this summer. She is right. Let's say we are saving x dollars on the flight to Paris from Vancouver. We are spending x times 75% to go to Vancouver for three nights--two nights before we leave and one night after, plus the long drive between Vancouver and Seattle, which can be as short as three hours or as long as five if you stop for lunch, have a long wait at the border, and traffic in both cities. Which sucks when it is bad. Which is exactly what happened yesterday.

The challenge with car trips is that there is no precise departure time--it is squishy, which I kind of hate. No one is motivated to get their butt in gear like when we travel by plane. We planned to leave "around ten," which meant we left at 10:45. The night before we left, the Boy realized he only had three pairs of underwear that fit. When I heard that, I was actually surprised he had any underwear that fit given that he has grown six inches taller since the last time he got new undies. So Jack and the Boy ran to the mall and were there when it opened yesterday morning. Nevermind we could have bought underwear in Van or Paris--they ran the errand before we left. When Jack got back, he realized he had to finish his notes from call on Wednesday night. Argh. Were we ever going to leave?

We finally did leave. We stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Bellingham (which was awesome, by the way) and the kids practiced their French during lunch. I was getting ready to say, "Nous sommes quatre," to the hostess and "Merci" to the waitress, but I didn't because they spoke English.

After lunch, we hit border patrol and had to wait for forty-five minutes, to then get stuck in stop and go weekend traffic into Vancouver. The Boy had said previously said he was worried I would embarrass him, and I couldn't figure out why. Then we were stuck in traffic, and Jack and I started bickering. He was going to make a left turn on a red, and I panicked. In Seattle, everyone runs reds. At best, it is annoying and at worst it is dangerous. The light turns green and you have to check to see who is flying like a bat out of hell through the red. When I drive in Canada, I try very hard not to be a jackass so they don't look at my license plate and think "stupid American." 

"See!" yelled the Boy. "Don't embarrass me in France! Just talk quietly." He had a point.

We finally got to the hotel after being stuck in downtown gridlock. I was pissed. Why didn't we just fly direct to France from Seattle and skip this hassle? We could have taken a forty-five minute train to SeaTac from our house and been in Paris the next morning. But no. We had to come here. 

When we got to the hotel, everyone was exhausted. The Boy was pissy, and he discovered he forgot his jacket and toothbrush, even though he was up at 6:30 a.m. poking around the house, looking at his phone half the time. Maybe if he got off his phone for a bit, he would have remembered his fucking toothbrush and jacket. So Jack, Claire Adele and I went to get the Boy a toothbrush and the rest of us coffee. Fortunately, he was old enough to leave alone in the hotel. I was happy to leave him behind. My head was throbbing.

We got back, and gave the Boy a sandwich we bought for him at Starbucks. Miraculously, his hanger went away. The Boy, Jack and I went to the pool while Claire Adele stayed in the room and checked her 850 text messages she missed during the five hour car ride to Van. Seriously. Social media for a teenager is like being a middle manager in a large corporation--she can't keep up with the group chats for her clubs and sports teams. I feel sorry for her. This is what she has to look forward to for the rest of her life. In our hotel room, there are pictures of the Eiffel Tower, the rose window from Notre Dame. The Boy found it curious that there were pictures of Paris in our hotel room in Vancouver.

In the pool, I finally relaxed. For the first time, I was glad we made the stop in Van. The Boy and Jack played ping pong on the patio and I talked a woman from England who was trying to prevent her seven year old son from cannonballing into the pool. I laughed. "It's vacation," I told her. "My kids are older, and I now relish when he was seven."

"Every age has its cross to bear," she said. She was right. That also applies to husbands.

After the pool, we found an Addidas shop and bought the Boy a new jacket. His soccer team jacket was so ratty. He wore every day. I washed it before we left, and couldn't get one of the sleeves clean at all.

"That's epoxy," the Boy said. He built rockets at Rocket Club. That black goo would never come off. 

The new jacket looked really good on him, to the point I couldn't say anything for fear he wouldn't like it if I liked it. We got the jacket, and went to the same Thai restaurant we've gone to every single time we've been to Vancouver. I would love to try a different restaurant, but that didn't work out. It was okay, the kids and Jack loved it. We tried new food there, and it was awesome.

When we got back to the hotel, the four of us went to the pool. The Boy was dancing in the hall. 

"I am finally getting excited about going to France," he said. 

"Were you nervous?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "It is a big international trip and all." Maybe a small dose of Van will help him inoculate him to Paris, which would be a good thing.

* Parts of this city, like any other major city, are kind of grungy. Yesterday, we saw a clean-cut blond girl wearing a Lululemon jacket and smoking a cigarette walking down the street. The jacket covered her butt, and we discovered she wasn't wearing pants, just underwear. Very strange.

Rewind

Note: This blog post contains math story problems.

Yesterday, I went to visit Claire Adele at Camp Orkila on Orcas Island. I started out the day in a bad mood, mostly because of myself. The night before I left, I checked Google Maps to see how long it would take me to get there. I've been there before multiple times and I know how to get there, but I wanted to double check. I saw that it was eighty miles to the ferry from my house, so I figured it would me about an hour and twenty minutes to get there since it is mostly highway.

Question #1: How fast (average speed) would Lauren have drive to get to the Anacortes Ferry in 80 minutes?

Answer #1: 60 miles an hour.

Question #2: The ferry leaves Anacortes at 10:20 a.m.. If Lauren leaves at 8:00 a.m., what time would she arrive in Anacortes?

Answer #2: 9:20 a.m.

Question #3: Lauren is going to walk on the ferry. She has to park, pay for parking and walk to the ferry terminal. She might also have to buy her ticket, since when she asked Jack if she should purchase her ticket ahead of time online, he said, "You can get a ticket at the terminal." Also, it will be Sunday morning so she imagines most of the weekend parking spots will be gone. Plus, she hurt her back, her knee is acting up and she still can't run/jog. How much buffer time would Lauren have between arriving in Anacortes to when the ferry leaves?

Question #3: One hour. This should be enough even if everything goes completely wrong.

Question #4: While Lauren is reasonably organized, she likes to have a "target leave time" and a "must leave now leave time." What is latest Lauren should leave for her must leave now time given her unreliable mobility?

Question #4: 8:20, to be safe.

I get up, get dressed, finish slicing the brownies I baked Saturday for Claire Adele and pack them into a box. I packed the rest of her goodie bag the night before. At 8:06, I still have time. I ask Jack to get me a ferry ticket.

"It says you should be at the ferry terminal twenty minutes before the boat leaves," Jack says.

"Okay," I say. I knew I had to be there early, but I didn't know they had a recommended time for walk on passengers.

"It says it may take an hour to process the payment for the ticket," Jack said.

"What?" This is the internet. It is supposed to be faster than anything else. That is why it exists.

I finish getting ready, but I stall as I wait for the ticket. I am now approaching my "must leave now time." I'll have to decide if I am going to leave before my $13.95 ticket prints.

"It is printing," Jack says. I grab it and walk down the twenty three steps to my car. When I get there, I realize I've forgotten my phone. My car has a GPS, and I think about going without my phone. My motherhood brain kicks in and says "Bring in just in case." Motherhood brains are very good at looking at all possible disaster scenarios. I go up the stairs, get my phone, and then back down. If I had forgotten anything else, I would called Jack or the Boy and asked them to bring it to me. Since it was my phone, I couldn't do it.

At 8:22 a.m., I get in the car and program my GPS to the ferry terminal.

"You will arrive in one hour, thirty six minutes," my GPS tells me.

"What!?!" I scream at my GPS. I panic. I wish I could rewind time back to 7:50 a.m. to tell myself to leave at 8:00 a.m. exactly.

Question #5: If Lauren has to be at the ferry terminal twenty minutes before the boat leaves and her GPS is correct, how much buffer time does Lauren have between arriving in Anacortes and having her butt in the boat line?

Answer #5: I am too freaked out to figure this out. I figure I have about twelve minutes of buffer time and I'll get there at 9:48. I'll have to drive fast.

When I calculate this for my blog, I realize I only had a two minute buffer. What happened in my brain? It lied to me so I wouldn't freak out and sob about missing my daughter. I pull out of my street and get on to leafy Ravenna Blvd. It twists and turns and is a beautiful street. Today, at 8:23 a.m., there is a driving school car in front of me that is going--I swear to god--9 miles an hour. I scream and swear and cry for this kid who is probably fifteen and a half years old to MOVE IT NOW!!!! I would lean on the horn, but it is likely that my daughter goes to school with this new driver. Plus, the car has a sign that reads "Taught by police officers!" Getting a ticket would set me back.

The car goes straight, and I turn left. I need to get away from this car and I find a different way to the highway.

Question #6: How fast does Lauren need to drive to make it to Anacortes in time?

Answer #6: Very fast.

Normally when I drive, I sit in the middle lane and drive the same speed as the car in front of me. This time, I shift to the left lane and try to go about ten to fifteen miles above the speed limit. I don't want to go too fast and get a ticket. Jack said if I got ticket, I could have unzipped the front of my dress and flashed some cleavage to get out of a ticket. I don't think I would have done that. I think I would have burst into tears and cried "I need to catch the ferry so I can see my daughter who I haven't seen in a month!!!" Plus, the cop might have wondered why I was dressed like a ho to visit my daughter at camp.

The faster I drove, the more time I shaved of the total time to get to the ferry. There is one part in Skagit County which has a speed limit of 70 miles per hour, which is bad because my GPS had already calculated this into my travel time. Fuck. I drive a 2004 Lexus 300 ES. (Don't get excited. We bought it used with 45,000 miles on it.) While this is a nice and comfortable car, it is not fast. The New York Times in its car reviews compared it to driving a Buick. Seventy-five was about as fast as I wanted to go for fear of something going wrong with the car.

I made it to the ferry at 9:38 a.m.. It was a miracle. I grabbed the first spot to the park. It was far away, but I had time to walk. I went to pay for parking, and the only way to park was to pay by phone! My motherhood "worst case scenario" brain had earned its keep for today.

I had to cross several lanes of traffic to make it to the ferry waiting room for walk-ons. There was a large fence keeping the pedestrians separate from the traffic, but I could figure out how to get to the other side. The ferry was coming in and cars would need to disembark. When they disembark, it is like rats coming off a sinking ship. There is no slow--just get off and away from this boat as fast as possible. I did not want to be pinned against the wrong side of the fence when the cars were released.

So I ran. Yes, you read that correctly: I ran. I ran about twenty yards to the end of the fence so I could get out of the way of the cars. I didn't fall. I didn't trip. It wasn't a pretty run, nor was it fast, but it was running.

I made it to the ferry on time, but I was a little stressed and feeling mildly melancholy. Jack and the Boy stayed home, which was fine. It was nice to have time to myself on the ferry and in the car. After all of that hassle, I worried that Claire Adele might not want me there. I know I missed her, but would she miss me? The hard part about parenting is that it is often an unrequited love--you love your kids more than they love you, and that is expected to be part of the bargain.

At camp, Claire Adele lives in a little bubble where she (and no one else) had parents or siblings. She loves that bubble, and even though this was "Family and Friends Weekend," she might not have wanted me contaminating her pure environment. But I did. I showed up with a bag of brownies, Goldfish crackers, dried cranberries, and apricots from the Farmers' Market. Claire Adele isn't into hugs, and she kind of winced when she saw me. She didn't know if I was coming or not, but my offering of food softened my arrival. We walked and talked and she told me about camp. I got to see the other Counselors in Training, which was nice. We both teared up during the CIT Family and Friends camp fire circle where the staff and CITs talked about previous weeks.

She asked if could take the later ferry at 8:45 p.m. instead of 5:15 p.m. so we could go out to dinner in town. Part of me knows she was motivated by food, but I wasn't so awful that she'd rather eat camp food instead of being seen with me. She  introduced me to her gossip magazine loving friend. They shared reading People and talked about the Karadashians. We got ice cream and I bought her a croissant from a bakery and a sandwich from Island Market, the local grocery store. She told me stories about her campers, whom she loved. All was good, and I got back on the ferry. On the ride back to Anacortes, I got up and wandered around. I went on the upper deck in the sunshine and looked out at the view. One of Claire Adele's jobs at camp was to greet campers at Anacortes, so she had to take the ferry a few times back and forth from Orcas to the mainland.

As I rode home, I thought about the Kurt Vonnegut quote: "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point 'If this isn't nice, then I don't know what is.'" There are times in life where getting places is a hassle, but rarely has the hassle been so counter to what I experienced when I arrived.

Dreams, Stairs! and News

The other night I dreamt I was running. I was running down a gravel road when my neighbor across the street saw me and happily yelled, "Lauren you are running!" As soon as I heard her, I fell and crashed into the small red rocks on the road. It was a strange dream, as dreams often are. I am not a big fan of long distance running, but I love little sprints to get across the street or to hit a tennis ball. That is what I miss.

While running is not in my immediate future, I need to get in shape for my trip to France in less than two months. I've gotten in shape for ski trips and mountain biking vacations, but it is strange to think of needing to get into shape to go to France, the food and fashion capital of the world. I could lose a few pounds so I can buy new clothes, or lose a few so I can gain them back in cream sauce and dessert. Mais non--I need to get into shape for these vacation goals:

• Bronze Level: Walk ten hours a day without my knee mutinying against me and my family.
• Silver Level: Climb the stairs around Mont Saint Michel.
• Gold Level: Climb down the 704 steps of the Eiffel Tower.

I must be the only person who has vacation goals. Isn't vacation suppose to be be time without goals?

With the exception of my friends who climb stairs for charity, going up and down stairs isn't an exercise that one loves or hates, but you do it because you need to. I've been able to go upstairs alternating legs for several weeks, but alternating while going down hasn't happened until this week. At physical therapy two weeks ago, I practiced going downstairs on their stairs, which have very long treads and handrails on both sides. My arms have gotten stronger since my accident, and I could carry myself down the stairs using both railings and while my legs dangled below, with my toes grazing the tops of the steps. (It wasn't quite that dramatic, but almost.) I about died when Jason said "You can do it without the railings!" Surprisingly, I could. Still, I was hesitant to try going down stairs outside of the physical therapy studio with their magical steps.

Last week, I tried the outside steps at the NE Library Branch. They have a low rise and a long tread, pull a nice handrail in the middle. Since my skiing accident last December, I have become an expert on noticing different types and ranges of stairs. It has become my hobby to study them. The library stairs were easy to descend. I would make a point of going up and down them a few times each time I visited.

This week, I have been trying to go down regular stairs alternating legs. By regular stairs, I mean ones with standard tread lengths and rises heights, and not ones with long treads, low rises, nor in narrow stairwells where there are handrails on both sides where I can hoist myself down.

Today I climbed down six flights of stairs alternating legs! This is a major milestone, one that I have been trying to accomplish for a while. I feel like a normal person, not one who is still recovering from surgery. I was slow, and I had to ice my knee before and after going down the stairs. I had to pause between steps sometimes, but I could do it! As my kids would say, "Go me!"

Perhaps this is what is next in my training program. I can't remember where I got Seattle Stairway Walks by Jake and Cathy Jaramillo, but it looks cool. It has to be--the first walk in Ravenna Park and it goes past my house!

That is my good news. I am sorry there has been so much bad news around lately. My kids have smart phones and computers with internet access, so it is almost impossible to avoid bad stuff. I am not talking about front page catastrophes like the shooting in Orlando, but less big news like the kid who was killed by a crocodile at Disney World, the stories that used to make page 3 of the newspaper. You had to make an effort to open the paper to know that kind of thing happened. Now, you just open your social media account and there it all is. Will this be good or bad for our kids? Will this make them better informed citizens, or will this age of "Too Much Information" make them fearful so they never leave their homes?

Given all of the bad news, I thought I'd post a nice soothing picture of some clouds.

La France, or Things I Used to be Good at

We are going to France this August for a week. Jack and the kids decided on this, and I agreed. We haven't decided yet where we are going to go or what we are going to do when we get there, but we have plane tickets.

When we go, I'll be five months past my knee surgery, which has a nine month recovery period. I will have to get into good shape, and pronto. When Jack and I went to Paris in 2004, we took the elevator up the Eiffel Tower, and we walked down. All of the steps. Right now, I can get down stairs if I use the "up with the good, down with the bad" method. I'd have an easier time getting up the Eiffel Tower than down at this point, which is really weird. My family also wants to visit Mont Saint Michel in northern France. I have been to Mont Saint Michel when I traveled to France before. I recall there are about 900 steps, give or take a few hundred. For a vacation focused on culture and history, it is going to be a fairly strenuous.

The best part of any trip if that it gives you something to look forward to. I know several parents who have withheld information about their kids going to Disney World or whatnot. I can understand some of that logic--parents might not want their three year old asking every morning for two months if today is the day they get to see Cinderella, followed by the meltdown when the little girl hears the disappointing news.

My kids are old enough to be part of the planning. Both kids are taking French in school, and the Boy has taken a new interest in doing his French homework. I studied French for seven years in middle, high school and college, but that was ages ago. I went to France for three weeks when I was a junior in high school and stayed with a family in Caen, Normandy. My conversational French exploded during that trip, and reached its peak when I was a freshman in college. I used my French a little bit (un peu) in my first job out of college, but not enough to keep me fluent.

At the library yesterday, I picked up some Pimsleur French language CD's. I listened to one CD in the car, and another while I eating lunch yesterday. These are "listen and repeat" lessons, where I have to practice both listening and speaking in French. In 2004, I remember asking at the airport train station in reasonable French, "Pardon me. We would like two train tickets into Paris." The answer came back to me was a flood of nonsense. Jack didn't help when he repeated in French what the woman said to me which I didn't understand in the first place. Oy. Long story short--I can speak French better than I can understand it, and that can cause more problems than it solves. I tried phrasing my questions in such a way that they begged a yes or no answer, but that didn't help either.

That was twelve years ago, and in those twelve years, I've used almost no French. When I plugged in the disks, I was surprised at how much I remembered. I could do and understand the listen and repeat exercises! After about the fourth lesson, I noticed interesting themes of sample conversations.

1. You go to a restaurant and ask if they have beer or wine. You ask a man how much money he has in both euros and dollars. Beaucoup?
2. A wife asks her husband for money and then they argue whether or not a pair of shoes are expensive. (Spoiler: He thinks they are; she thinks they aren't.)
3. A woman gives a bellhop 100 euros, and then haggles him about the price of a newspaper.
4. A man asks a woman if she wants to go to dinner. She said that sounds nice, but she has plans for dinner with her husband. The man then asks the woman if she would like a drink. He offers wine and beer, but she wants tea. Then their spouses show up.

I am not making this up.

I was concentrating so hard it took me a while to figure out that the plot line of this soap opera language class was messed up. With that realization I also began to realize how much real French I forgot. These are the grammar rules that distinguish a true speaker of French from an wannabe. In 2004, I told a waiter that I heard his restaurant had the best cassoulet in Paris. He was delighted I spoke French, and was pleased that I was looking forward to the bean stew. Then he very kindly and patiently corrected my use of "best." I got an "A" for effort and a "meh" for execution. I wanted to say I read Hugo and Flaubert in French in college, and now I barely order a meal in a restaurant, but I didn't.

I don't remember the gender of many (okay, all) nouns. Wine (vin) is masculine and beer (biere) is feminine. I would have guessed the other way around. The gender of alcohol was not a main part of my seventh grade French class. I don't remember which verbs are self-reflexive. I forgot there were such a thing as self-reflexive verbs. And I never really bothered to learn how to conjugate vous, the plural of "you," which doesn't exist in proper English. In improper English, it might be youse, as in youse guys or y'all.

I was listening to one of the CD's in the car between working out and running an errand at U Village. In the car, I heard an addition lesson, which was harder than I thought. Dix et trois font... (fill in the blank.) The first few were easy, but after the tenth one, I had to work hard to keep up. I had to translate each number, add them, and then translate the sum back into French. It was hard and the speaker was fast, but I got most of them right.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself when I got out of the car and overheard a woman talking on her cell phone in French. Of course, I understood none of it, which was a bucket of cold water on my renewed language skills. But at least now I can ask a random guy to buy me a drink at a bar. If things go well, I can ask how much money he has.

Spring Break and Prophet from my Future

Bike Time: 50 minutes 

Distance: 9.05 miles on interval training (i.e., not no resistance)

Today is the last day of Spring Break. I went on Facebook, which was a bad idea. I saw pictures of my friends hiking the Grand Canyon, visiting Red Rock, frolicking with dolphins in Cabo, and seeing Broadway plays in New York. I got a big case of FOMO (fear of missing out), as this is what my FB Spring Break post would look like:

Hey! Here are the great books I've read and I am reading. I've done some sewing, and shipped off a blanket to my mom. Made some napkins too using this pattern! Never mind my teenage daughter thinks making napkins is an economic waste. "Consider your hourly rate at least $15 an hour. How long does it take you to make a napkin, plus the cost of supplies and driving to the fabric store? Those napkins are $17 each and you buy one at Mrs. Cooks for $5." Who says high school kids these days don't know anything? She doesn't know my billable rate when I was at the consulting firm. If you took all of the napkins and other stuff I've sewn since my injury times my billable rate, they would cost more than I paid for the dining room table and chairs! Ha!

"Love the first 50 pages! Bitchy! but in a good way!" -- Lauren

"Steamy." -- Lauren

Yes, I am getting to the point where what used to be a hobby is now a major form of entertainment. Did I mention I have limited mobility and it is driving me nuts? My physical therapist said if I went to New York for vacation six weeks after the surgery, my knee would be mad at me. Instead, the rest of my body is mad at my knee for keeping me home. 

There was some good news. My friend Vicki from college sent me text saying she wanted to chat and she was hoping I was having a good recovery from my surgery. She lives in California, but has family in the Pacific Northwest who she visits frequently. When we connected in real time, she asked how I was doing. I took a deep breath. I feared boring her or being Debbie Downer. She seemed sincerely curious. She is an old friend, but most people who haven't been through a knee surgery think "You can walk now, right? All's good." I told her how I am working out, and I can't walk up and downstairs normally--my usual list of stuff.

She told me about her knee surgery in her thirties, which I had forgotten about. I remember her having knee trouble, and finally getting it fixed. I was probably one of those people who thought "All's good." In my thirties, I probably wasn't used to dealing with people with ailments. Now, I keep a mental register for injuries and infirmities. For example, my friend Karen's husband tore his achilles tendon, and Tanya's husband has his appendix out. Tanya was mugged in her early twenties, and the attacker stabbed her hand. She went through months of agonizing physical therapy to be able to touch her fingers to her thumb.

Vicki was now a prophet from my future. I've talked to other people who've torn their ACL, but here one of my oldest friends had gone through it, too. "I thought that I would never get better. I thought I might get stuck like this forever. But now I can dance and walk."

We talked about physical therapy. She'd go to the gym before work, ride the exercise bike for ten minutes, and then ride the bike for ten minutes afterward work. She was impressed that I was up to forty-five minutes on the bike. We talked about the differences in recovery between being in your thirties versus forties, and how it would only get worse the older we get.

My favorite part was when we talked about crossing the street, and the million micro-decisions that are made. "I can't do a mini-jog when I cross the street, so I try to walk as fast as I could so I can make before the 'walk' sign changes. But I don't want to walk so fast that I trip and fall. That would be worse," I said.

"I took my time," Vicki said. "I didn't care if cars had to wait for me." I laughed. She was right, but then I remember the time a guy in a white muscle sports car let me cross the street, not realizing there are tortoises at the zoo who move faster than me. He tried to clip me as soon he had enough room to pass me.

"You'll be better soon," she said. "Before you know it, you'll be dancing." A call from an old friend was worth a thousand FB posts.