Conversational vignettes

Justin: "Whatcha thinkin' about?"

Me: "Whether Vulcans would make good parents."

Justin: ???

Me: "Vulcan kids are probably fine. But if a Vulcan got left to babysit, they'd probably have problems." (I start doing a Spock voice) "You have been fed, you have been cleaned, you have been entertained. It is not logical that you should be crying."

Justin: "I'm sorry I asked."



Today I pull out a stick of butter to make cupcakes.

Justin: "What are you doing?"

Me: "I'm waiting for my butter to soften. And no, that's not a euphemism for something dirty."

Justin: "Didn't sound like it."

Me: "EVERYTHING sounds dirty if you said that it's not a euphemism for something else. Or if you say 'if you know what I mean.'"

Justin: .....

Me: "I'm changing out the toilet paper roll.....if you know what I mean."

Justin leaves very quickly.


Today I:

Did three loads of laundry
Ran errands for supplies for Liam's birthday party
Baked cupcakes
Made filling for mandu (potstickers) and marinated tomatoes
Stuffed a dragon pinata....if you know what I mean.

09/05

Today was Liam's birthday, so I taped balloons and crepe paper across his door so when he'd open it the balloons would fall on him and he'd have to burst through the crepe papers. He opened the door so slowly though, the balloons just fell to the floor and Alana was the one to run through the paper. 

Reason 713487961 to love Seattle. I have fresh wild blackberries....FROM MY FRONT YARD. This is about 1/8th of what I've harvested. I now have two gallons of frozen berries in my freezer to get me through the winter. Yum.

Today I:

Ran 3 loads of laundry

Finished my book

Helped my brother with origami for something cool

09/04

Today I:

Took Liam to speech therapy
Dropped by the post office to pick up a box
Picked up milk and spices at the grocery store
Disassembled the table in the garage with Justin's help, moved the table from the garage to the dining room with Justin's help, and then stood useless while Justin reassembled the table for me. I now have a table that's looking very lonely without chairs.

Bumbershoot

So my brother had an extra ticket to the gig that he was doing at Bumbershoot tonight, so I got to tag along. Bumbershoot is a huge arts, music and comedy festival that happens at the Seattle Center (where the Space Needle is). He hosted a trivia contest after which he and Mindy (my sister-in-law) went to see the band Vaseline at one of the outdoor theaters. I'm not a huge concert person and so I wandered off and bought some veggie spring rolls at one of the food stalls and walked around. There some very cool artist stands that I looked at (though not $35 a shirt cool) and I got to listen to the bands from farther away so it didn't hurt my  ears.

Source This fountain is HUGE. This photo was obviously not taken tonight.

Afterwards I settled by the fountain and just sat. You know the last time I was able to just sit down? It's been MONTHS. It was quite relaxing know that a kid wasn't going to run up and start whining or demanding something. Despite being surrounded by people, I felt very calm and alone mostly because it's been a while since I didn't have anywhere to go or was responsible for another person. Bumbershoot was awesome and something that I totally would not do normally because of the noise and crowds, but I did okay because I had mints that I could suck on when I was feeling stressed. Sucking on something makes me not chew on the inside of my mouth and turn it into a cankerous mess. People in high school always knew I was a good source for tic tacs because I had to always have them to stay calm. But you had to take two. ALWAYS TWO.

Today I:

Took Alana to speech therapy and then Joann fabric to get stuff for her Halloween costume.

Made it through the smoke, noise and chaos of Bumbershoot.

Saturday is a special day

It's the day that we try not to ram other drivers on the road.

Today I:
Put 2 coats of polyurethane on the table
Went to two grocery stores (?!?), Target, and the Korean store
Took Liam's feather duvet to the laundromat and finished my book. The two are not unrelated. Laundromats are depressing places.

So we're lucky to live in an area that's simultaneously quiet and close to everything. Literally two streets over is a major highway that runs through Seattle and almost half the county north of us. We're also lucky that we live within walking distance of two grocery stores, couple of drug stores, an auto supply store, a DI (seriously, how did me move from Utah and end up across the street from a DI?) and a smattering of restaurants. I rarely driver more than 5 miles from our house. One of the grocery stores has an AWESOME selection of non alcoholic drinks. I can get apple beer, one of the things I was prepared miss from Utah, but turns out you can get it here too, so SUCK IT UTAH. Anyway, they have about a million types root beer, sarsaparilla beer, and birch beer. We're slowly making our way through them.

Mmmmm, contains yucca extractives

More awesome is the plethora of Korean stores around here. My favourite one is this one:

but there is LITERALLY another Korean store across the street. In the same strip mall as Boo Han is a Korean dry cleaner, a Korean optometrist, a Korean book-ish store, a Korean bakery, a Korean pharmacist, a sushi restaurant where the owners speak Korean, a Korean deli, and what I can only assume was a huge mistake on the part of the location scout for Verizon, a Verizon store. Maybe the staff only speaks Korean? Anyway, Boo Han is big. It has a small restaurant inside that you can get a quick lunch, a counter where you can get kim pop (a sort of Korean sushi without the fish), a small produce section, live abalone and flatfish in a tank, and lots and lots of narrow aisles packed with Korea items.

Half of this aisle was soy sauces. The other half was sesame oil.

It's like Costco for Korean pot noodles.

Bet you can't guess what's in this aisle. That's right, noodles!

This was an example of stuff you can buy from the butcher...

As well is this. $3.99/lb of squid is a GOOD DEAL.

Straight ahead is the restaurant (behind the baked goods) and kim pop counter.  Notice the  prominence of Korean vs. English.

Everyone speaks Korean here. I usually mutter stuff to the cashier, hoping they don't notice I'm not really speaking the same language. I'm usually able to say "thank you" and remember the right form for "goodbye", but I have to pick out the rest from cues. Like if the cashier says, "혹시, box를 원하세요?", I obviously can figure out if she's asking if I want a box. Don't ask me why she didn't say box in Korean, that one still is puzzling me. But until I can improve my language skills, I can fill my tummy with kim chi and soba noodles.

08/31

Today I:

Went to the bank, grocery store, city building, and Home Depot
Put the last coat of stain on the table
most importantly didn't ram the annoying Prius in front of me at Costco gas that wouldn't pull forward even though cars were backing up into the street. Major win.

Miss Saigon

In July my best friend moved to Vietnam. (See her adventures here). She's posted about the food they've tried and I realized that I haven't ever really had Vietnamese food. I've had a sandwich once that was was pretty good. So tonight we took the kids to a restaurant called Tic-Tac-Pho (get it? Tic-tac-toe? Except pho doesn't rhyme with toe, so I don't get it either) and I figured I should try pho. Meh. I didn't hate it. I realized that I don't really like Vietnamese food because I hate cilantro. Apparently, it might be genetic. And cilantro is very plentiful. But I had some of the kids's teriyaki chicken that was yummy.

Today I:

Did two coats of stain on the table
Two loads of laundry
Took Alana to speech therapy and then Home Depot and library