I Took Some Horrible Pictures Of Fun And Then I Was Sad

Three of my Most Best Bestest Besties came to visit this last weekend!!! (Which I celebrated with a dance of glee and happiness. And, yes, my dance of glee and happiness includes one or two Gangnam style moves. I perform them badly.)  The timing of their visit was awesome, because the voices in my head were getting louder, and more insistent to be fed, clothed and kept in a basic state of aliveness. (In hindsight, those voices may actually be my children.) Me and my Most Best Bestest Besties do this every year, and every year we're in a different city, mostly because some of them insist on moving, like, a lot. But this year it was my year! We were going to SEATTLE! So, I did what any normal Seattleite-ish* would do when their out of town Most Best Bestest Besties visit. (That was the last time I'm going to use that phrase. Promise. Spoiler Alert: I'm lying.) I took them to the Space Needle!

Which, when they saw it, they were all, "Wow! This is awesome!" and some other stuff. And I was all, "I know, right?! Elvis!" And they all gave me a strange look that I took to be a collective exhibit of overwhelming pop culture awe, because, you know: ELVIS! And began to point out the important sights from the top of the Needle. Like this one:

Me: (talking really fast and gesturing wildly, because that's what tour guides do) We passed the Space Needle restaurant where Elvis sang "I'm Falling in Love Tonight" on our way up, but since the elevator didn't stop we didn't see it. But! Down there, is the Science Center where Elvis and Sue-Lin were chased under the arches and through the fountains by security guards in the movie!

Most Best Bestest Besties: Um.  What are you talking about, Martha?

Me:  It Happened at the World's Fair.

Most Best Bestest Besties: ------

Me: 1963?

Most Best Bestest Besties: ------

Me: The Elvis Presley movie?

Most Best Bestest Besties: We've never seen an Elvis movie.

Me: (in my sad voice, that I normally use for describing empty coffee cups and dead puppies) Seriously? No Elvis movies? Like...ever?

And that's when I realized I had to throw out my original "Tour of Elvis in Seattle".  And it's all my Most Best Bestest Besties fault.  Because it had the potential to be the most awesome "Most Best Bestest Besties Personal Tour of Elvis in Seattle" EVER! (Which is probably even true because, most likely, it's the only personal tour of Elvis in Seattle in the history of, um... ever.)

Instead, I had to show them the car that drives around with a hay ball on it's roof:

And the dead wolf fish in Pike's Place:

And, obviously, no one gets over this kind of Elvis disappointment without a little liquid fortitude:

Then I took them to the prettiest toilets in Seattle:

And a book store, because the two stops seemed to flow together well:

And, then, over some delicious Turkish food, I may have convinced them that the Seattle Mariners baseball team was recently sold to Texas**. Which, in my defense, is totally plausible considering Seattle sold the SuperSonics basketball team to Tennessee once.

But, I made up for it by taking them to "See A Shoe Actually Worn By World's Tallest Man":

And to see the hula hooping guitar/harmonica playing guy on the street corner:

The Dude has skillz.  Serious skillz.

And, then, the day came, when, one by one, my Most Best Bestest Besties boarded the monorail (where Elvis had sung to a sleeping-oh, never mind...) and were whisked away, each to their own lonely airplanes to their own lonely corners of the United States.  And I was sad.

And then, on the way back to the hotel, all by myself, to pick up my suitcase, I walked by this:

And the sight of the beautiful flowers callously shoved into a trash can at the Seattle Center almost made me cry....

But then I remembered that one scene from It Happened at the World's Fair!

You know, the one with Kurt Russell?

By the trash can?

You do?!

Finally, someone's seen it!***


*Because, I don't actually live in Seattle, or, even on the same land form....

**But only for like five minutes.  Because I couldn't keep from laughing.  Or, maybe, now that I think about it, they may have just given me this one.  You know, because of my huge Elvis tour guide disappointment? Because they're just plain awesome Most Best Bestest Besties like that. (Dude, that was like the most awkward Most Best Bestest Besties sentence ever.)

***Because someone out there has had to have seen this movie!

As Long As She Uses Her Super Powers For Good And Not Evil We Should Be Just Fine

Some people would say completing a triathlon makes you a superhero.  Not everyone, obviously. But, you know, some... people....

OK. Fine. "Some People" is really the same person who looks at this picture on the wall of my favorite restaurant* and exclaims at the top of her voice, "THAT MOMMY!":

Oh, yeah. My two year old thinks I'm a ROCK STAR!

But, whatever, dude.  A compliment is a compliment.   And, as the highlight of my day is chugging down a megalithic cup of coffee each morning at 7am**....

But, as the current reigning Rock Star/Superhero residing in our house, I have begun to realize exactly how lonely it is at the top.  So, I decided to create my own Superhero sidekick. Out of one of my children.  Obviously, I picked Ellie, not just because she thinks I'm a ROCK STAR!, but for practical reasons too. She's smaller than Katie, and therefore her DNA should be easier to mutate.  Also, I saw her licking our travel sized Operation game, and realized she'd already done like half the work for me. Because, as I've recently learned, our DNA can be "remarkably modified through energy centers", and that's basically what a battery is, right? Just little tubes of energy centers. And, since the website I learned all this off of also used words like "starship" and "Galactic Federation" and kept calling everyone on the Internet "dear Hearts" it's probably totally legit.

However, I couldn't leave this experiment at just one DNA changing variable, no matter how heavily researched by Sheldan Nidle and his "space kin". So I didn't.

More Things Ellie has Licked in her Quest to Obtain The Awesome Super Powers:

Her toes (For fleetness!)
Her shoes (For inpenetratable fleetness!)
Library books (For undepthable knowledge!)
A used band-aide (Little know fact: this is also how Wolverine got his super power.)
Her sister (To be able to create strong relational bonds just like Marcus from the Volturi in Twilight!)
Me (For the ability to withstand high levels of caffeine!)

The experiment seems to be going really well so far! I mean, sure, there's the side effect of huge amounts of mucus streaming from her nostrils, but, it's probably just a "scalar wave", which is really just "the result of inter-dimensional electromagnetic wave propagation" which simply "operates in multi-dimensional space/time."  Nothing to worry about.

Which is why I'm moving her into stage two this weekend.  That's right. It's time to visit the petting zoo!


Listen, Sheep. It's for the greater good.



*Not just because it has a disco ball in the restroom, an Elvis wall and a self serve coffee station out of an old VW bus. But, let's face it, it totally helps!

**OK. Fine.  There are other highlights too, but none that come in an awesome 3-D butterfly mug.  Mostly because my kids won't fit.

Please Excuse My Butt. It's Being Rude. Again.

This summer I have done my best to shield you all from the uncouth mutterings from my butt.  No.... No.... (waves hand vaguely, blushes) Don't thank me.... It was nothing.

No.

Really.

It was practically nothing.

(Those last three sentences were in my serious voice.  In case you missed it.)

See, another triathlon season has come and gone.  And, with a stellar lack of motivation shown by myself once again, I signed up for exactly one.  Wait.  Let me say this differently:

1.

Uno.

I.

Ibotuyi.

(Um, I made that last one up. Because Nickelodeon only lets Dora the Explorer talk to me in two languages.) And, because I only signed up for ibotuyi triathlon, I never got serious about my training. And, consequentially, conversations with Mabel began to go something like this:

Mabel: We should ride bikes tomorrow.

Me: (In my whiny voice.) Is it Friday alllrrrreeeaaaddy???

Mabel: Yep.  What route do you want to do?

Me: (In my serious voice. The one that comes with the scary "Don't touch my coffee" stare.) Same.

Mabel: It's a pretty flat route, you know, maybe we should do one wi-

Me: (In my "Did she seriously just touch my coffee" voice, which is kinda loud, and comes with irrational stomping.) SAME!!!!

Mabel: -hills....

Poor Mabel.  She totally deserves a free coffee, a fancy house on the beach in the Cayman Islands and  a donut for putting up with my whiny butt this summer. Or at least two out of the three.

But, no matter how many times I managed to throw a fit sneakily worm my way out of biking that almost flat 8 mile route with Mabel, last Sunday came anyway and bit me on the...

...(wait for it)...

butt.

(That was totally obvious, wasn't it?)

First, I had to battle my way through a half mile of cold lake water. Which included putting some woman in a head lock.  Accidentally. I think.  This makes complete sense, by the way, if you've ever done a triathlon.

Then, there it was.  Swinging, suspended, ever so slightly in the what the meteorologists were calling a "gentle breeze of early Autumn", from the communal bike rack. By its seat.  Accusingly. It may have even smirked.  Or that was my butt.  It's hard to tell sometimes after attempting all those WWE moves in 33 feet of murky lake water. However, not one to be intimidated by extremely tall doors or accusatory smirking bike seats, I grabbed my helmet, and headed out into that"gentle breeze of early Autumn". Which, by mile 0.3 was more like "stupid dumb cyclone of frr-rrr-rr-reeze my butt off dead of winter".  And I began to mutter about "dumb pseudo-scientists with their stupid spinning Dopplers". Which entertained me for about another 0.3 miles, but then reality set in.  I had fifteen more miles to go. Wait.  Let me say that differently:

15. Miles.

Quince. Milla.

XV. Millia.

Fabuto. Buttsquishes!

And most of it was uphill.  Which meant I spent the next fabuto miles buttsquishes pedaling to this cadence: "Mabel was right. Mabel was right. Why am I so stupid? Mabel was right." Dude, let me tell you, if it wasn't for the quacking I did each time I passed Mallard Road, I think I may have gone insane!

But then, came the run, and, you know, after a quick trip to the porta-potty and a mile of shuffling running, it wasn't so bad. I even managed to finish with a smile on my face!

Which, considering I hadn't even gotten to the free beer and massage yet, means it was pretty darn awesome!

Also? My butt is a total liar.

Except about that whole bike thing.