Laundry

Let me explain my laundering system to you. It's a process that's been refined after years, and altered with the addition of children. I gather all the clothes in the house, assess if any have been peed on (aren't children fun?), stuff them into the washer, soak them if they urine tinged and wash them normally if not. Then they are either hung up or dried in the dryer. THEN they are moved to the top of the counter until they are needed for actually wearing. Or until Justin gets tired of the piles of laundry taking over the downstairs bathroom and hauls them up to our bedroom where I trip over them every night. Rinse and repeat with interjected episodes  of panic when trying to find that one item in the heap o' laundry.

Today I:
Napped
Finished a book
Went to the grocery store
Washed and ironed my sheets (yes, I'm aware how crazy I sound especially when I don't even fold my socks. Try it once and then you'll never go back)

Gilly's birthday party

Who is Gilly you ask? Gilly is the clay snake Liam made on Tuesday. Apparently, after of months of begging for a birthday party, Liam got a little stage fright when it actually came time for his birthday. So we celebrated Gilly's instead.

Meet Gilly. He's a snake, if you can't tell.

Since this is Liam's first birthday party that he can remember, I didn't want to overload him with kids. So I invited over my brother, his wife, and their two kids, Caitlin and Dylan.  First the kids decorated shields. 

If I had thought about it beforehand, I'd probably have glued some poster board over the cardboard to make it white and easier to colour on. 

Next they ran an obstacle course. First they can to crawl through the tunnel to sneak past the wicked witch, then ride horses through the woods, catapult bean bags at the castle so the drawbridge would come down, fight their way through the evil knights and ninjas, and kill the dragon at the end for the treasure.

The full gamut.

Sneaking past the witch.

Riding the horses through the woods.

Caitlin had a little hoop skirt in her dress. HOW CUTE IS THAT?

Dylan riding, and Caitlin and Liam preparing to throw bean bags at the fortress.

The moat and draw bridge

Storming the castle

You can see the corpses of the knights in the background. They were Mylar balloons with helmets and faces drawn on them.

Attacking the dragon. We bought Liam a nice foam injected sword, but he rejected it for a stick.

If it wasn't for Dylan, we'd still be working on the pinata.

Food: teriyaki chicken, lemon garlic shrimp, strawberries, grilled pineapples, marinated tomatoes and baguettes, smoked salmon carpaccio, missing: mandu (potstickers)

Wonderful time was had by one and all, but I'm so glad that it's over. I'm now going to go die on the couch.

Today I:

Took Alana to speech therapy

Drove to TWO different Dollar Trees for balloons since one was out of helium (seriously?!?)

Came home and cooked and cooked and cooked and cooked.

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.