Cute as a Duck

Remember when your pet duck was a wee little fluffy yellow duckling that loved being dried off with a hair dryer and would fall asleep on your chest?



Then, next thing you know, their adult pin feathers are all grown in?



Yep. Ellie turned four this week.

And her pin feathers are coming along nicely.


Related Note (ie T.A.I.*): 

All pools and lakes this summer should hand out hair dryers as people arrive! It'd be like a public service! Because, no matter how hot you think it is getting into the lake, the air is measurably 27 times colder when you get out. Seriously. And a hairdryer handed to each swimmer would say "We care about you and your future goose pimpled epidermis."  Plus, the ducks would completely benefit too. And the geese.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "Martha, you can't had out hair dryers at public swimming establishments! There'd be electrocuted bodies floating absolutely everywhere! Plus, have you seriously thought about how much chlorine would need to be added to the water to cover up the obvious smells that will follow such carnage?"

First, I don't think you're giving the collective scientific knowledge of the general public enough credit. Plus, we'd leave all those "DON'T USE IN A BATHTUB!!" stickers on the hairdryers, you know, for legal reasons. Aaaannnnd, the hairdryers couldn't plug in anyway. All those chords crisscrossing lake shores and pool decks? Total trip hazard. We'll hand out battery powered hairdryers instead. And, as everyone knows, you can't become electrocuted with batteries or they wouldn't be needed for all those toys four year olds receive at their birthday parties. Because good parents don't buy electrocution toys for their kids. I mean, dude, I've totally thought this through!

Except for that whole chlorine thing. You may have a point there.



*Totally Awesome Idea

You Know What They Say About Eavesdroppers....

According to a conversation I, um, unintentionally overheard, between some college students on the bus to the library with Katie and Ellie the other day, Motherhood is a competition. And I thought, "*snort* *eye roll* Whatever, dudes."

Then I had this conversation with Ellie:

Ellie: (skipping through the house, my Mother's Day card with the monkey's on it cradled in her small arms) Mommy! Mommy! Will you read your card to me again?

Me: (my heart warming, as I gently take the card from her breakfast of homemade pumpkin bread stickied fingers) Sure, I can do that. (opening card, reading, as Ellie's smile beams up at me) "1. You're LOTS of fun! 2. You take GREAT care of me. 3. You make my FAVORITE foods. 4. You teach me IMPORTANT stuff. 5. Your hugs are the BEST! There you go-FIVE reasons why you're the BEST MOTHER EVER! HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! Love, Katie and Ellie".

Ellie: (Giggling, with the joy of unconditional love. Which sounds like butterfly wings, by the way.) I like that card!

Me: You do? Why?

Ellie: (Giggling. Even more. Those butterflies are beginning to sound ominous.) Yeah. It's funny! Because I really like Daddy best!

Me: (Defeatedly, to Ellie's back, as she skips out of the room, mother's day card forgotten, intent on drawing "Daddy the best picture ever".) Don't we all, kid. Don't we all.


And that's when I realized that the bus full of undergrads debating the qualities of what motherhood should epitomize were right. Motherhood is totally a competition.

And I'm losing.

To a man.

A Juxtaposition Of Two Childhoods

Have you heard about this new thing all the cool people are doing now? Throw back Thursday? My friend, Aingel, totally posted a pic of us from our Disneyland trip back in college, and I was like, "Wow. Yeah. Hellooo 38th birthday. I guess that was awhile ago." Of course, I was also like, "Dude. Am I wearing my car key around my neck like a stylish necklace? That is such a good idea!" But, really, that fashion choice was steeped in practicality because I had a bad habit of locking my keys in the car when I was in college. Kinda a lot. Which, one time, kinda also caused another friend and I to spend a night in the police station after I locked my keys in during this really bad snow storm. But, that story doesn't really apply to this cool #TBT thing that's going around. Mostly, because we didn't really get arrested and so, you know, no mugshots to post on Facebook.

College. Those were good times, man.

Anyway, awhile ago my parents sent me a link to this video of them 4-wheeling in Colorado last summer:



It totally brought back all those childhood memories of me, bobble-heading around in the back of the CJ-5, trying to read the latest Sweet Valley High book, (Oh my gosh! Elizabeth and Todd just can't break up! They just can't!) the desert dust settling in a thick film over the pages, while getting shot in the face with a squirt bottle at random times by my sister, Pearl.

Because we didn't have air conditioning.

And she was concerned I'd succumb to heat stroke.

Obviously.

About the same time I was nostalgicing about my high adventure childhood, I took a video of Katie and Ellie helping out around the house:




And, after watching it again, I thought, "Huh. Well..."

But then, I reassured myself that everyone learns about teamwork in different ways. Right?

Besides, they did an awesome job, people:

Plus, neither of them sprayed the other in the face with a squirt bottle.

Not even once.

Pearl. 

$5 Books!?! Party Favors For Everyone!!

It's my birthday this week, and guys? I even already got a birthday present!!

NEW SHOE BUTTERFLIES!

And they totally made me "super duper alley ooper flooper cooper fast" on my run this morning as their wings glittered, flittered and fluttered in the spring breeze! That I created. With my super fast running. Obviously.

And, except for an evening of babysitting Mabel has offered up to Jon and I like a rare and beautiful pearl made exclusively of rainbows and coffee beans (two of the most beautiful elements in the world), the butterflies probably would have been the highlight of my week. Would have been, if not for a recent conversation between Mabel, Belinda, Geraldine and myself:

Belinda: I'm so excited for your birthday!

Me: You are? Why?

Belinda: Yeah! We're going OUT! And we're doing karaoke! (high fives Geraldine)

Me: (looking quizzically, yet startledly, at Mabel) We are?

Mabel: (with her "Belinda's serious" expression, which really shows up around her eyebrows) Yep. Remember? We talked about it at Katie's birthday party?

Me: (in my crapazoidal voice) WHAT!?! Dudes. I was all jazzed up on roller skating and cupcakes that day, I don't remember any of this.

Mabel: (in her serious voice) And I am not singing.

Belinda: You're singing, right Martha? It's your birthday, you have to! It's going to be so fun!

Me: (mentally rubbing my forehead in distress while silently mumbling criminy...criminy...criminy...) I am. So not singing. But...  we could still go out or something? That could be, um, fun.... Ooo! We could go to a museum!

Belinda and Geraldine: Hahhahahahahaha!

Mabel: Um, guys? She's serious.

Me: (getting excited) It would be without all the children!!!

Mabel: Oh! It wouldn't take that long, then! We could still-

Belinda: (In her I've been to a museum with Martha before voice. It sounds, tired,for some strange reason.) No. It will. Don't you remember the museum in Roslyn last summer?

Geraldine: Oh my gosh, yes!

Me: Oooo! That was a cool museum! I need to go back there someday, I didn't see half of what they had on display!

Mabel: No, I didn't go. I was dropping the guys off for mountain biking. Why?

Belinda: It took for. ev. er.  Seriously! Forever! And it only had one room!

Geraldine: Yeah. I like museums, but, not that much.

Me: But! The whole town-

Geraldine: Of 900 people

Me: (ignoring Geraldine, because, the Donner-Reed Party only had 87 people and everyone agrees that was interesting) -donated stuff to the museum. Stuff they'd used! Stuff they brought when they traveled across on the Oregon Trail! Things they had made! Everything in there had a story! And all those handwritten interpretive signs.... It was just so, so, so awesome. (cue dreamy history look here)

Belinda: Yeah. No museums.

Geraldine: (looking up from her phone) What if we get a hotel room and make a night of it?

Me: (snapping out of my historical interpretive sign revelry as visions of hairdryer balloon tennis are lobbed directly into my brain by Geraldine) LIKE A SLUMBER PARTY!!

Geraldine: (slowly) Sure... We don't have to go to karaoke. (searching her phone) Hey! What about this? There's a hotel and the bar is also a bookstore. That sounds like something you would like, Martha.

Me: (carefully. cautiously. checking.) And, you guys, will go with me?

Everyone: Yeah. (too quickly, probably because they're relieved I gave up on that museum idea) It's your birthday.

Me: (striking like a blacksmith from the days of old Roslyn) OK! Let's book it! (pun, completely, intended)

Dudes! Do you know what this means? For my birthday I totally get to hang out in my pj's while reading $5 books in the hotel bookstore/bar-whatever-thing, interspersed with rousing matches of hairdryer tennis!

Hey! Geraldine, Belinda, and Mabel! Don't forget to pack your running shoes! My Shoe Butterflies and I just thought of a great 8 mile route we could do! You guys throw the best birthday parties!

Because Some Things Need To Be Set Straight

In my defense...

Listen, Random Mom at The Park, I wasn't trying to steal your untended cupcake. There was a crow. And it totally framed me! And, sure, I looked guilty standing there holding your cupcake without a bird in sight, but I'm serious. Blacky the Crow is like that. I've read Thornton Burgess, so I totally know.

In my defense...

Last Wednesday? On those hill repeats? I ran past that donut shop, like five times, before crashing through the doors, throwing all the money I had stashed in my running belt at the person behind the counter and demanding ALL THE DONUTS! Five. Times. People.

In my defense...

I meant to run the whole seven miles I had scheduled for this morning, but my large colon had other ideas. Or, maybe I should say the bean laden nachos I had for dinner two days ago, after making their slow slide through my large colon, had other ideas. Eh, either way, after that pit stop at the coffee shop, obviously I needed to walk the last .78 miles home. Otherwise, you know, my coffee would have sloshed all over that deliciously scrumptious almond croissant I was stuffing in my mouth.

In my defense...

Ellie has been particularly interested in how bodies work lately. Specifically, about how that bright blue frosted birthday party cupcake turned her tut-tut such a "really cool color, Mommy!" So, we pulled out some old diagrams, albeit for a much less stressful reason, and have been tracing the maze that is the large and small colons of our bodies. I'm hoping we move onto muscles soon. The show and tell component has to be a wee bit more, um... public friendly?

In my defense...

After school that one day, when I said that Katie was an annoying baby, I.... Well... OK, look. She kinda was. She never slept. She refused to play with other children until she was almost three. She talked really early and kept asking me all these questions. All the time.  And, did I mention that no sleep thing? Because, as an introvert, I kinda need a brain reset time, and when babies give up taking naps at, like, 9 months old, there is no. mommy. brain. reset. time.  And, down that road, as King Lear said, madness totally lies. Including babies, no matter what kind of cute mumbo jumbo they try to work on us with their adorable large heads and chubby arms that yawn and stretch and rub their eyes. They ain't falling asleep. They just want to see you try to put them down for a nap. Babies. They're completely full of it.

In my defense...

I thought Ellie was an annoying baby too. Because of the whole sleep thing. Which, she would do during the day, but at night? Nothin'. You try living on a collected four hours of sleep a night for six months straight. It's really hard. Dudes, the children may have seriously killed off over half my brain cells before they reached the age of three. Both of them.

In my defense...

Clive lent me Just A Geek by Wil Wheaton last week. And, while I'm only half way through it, what I'm getting from the book, is that Wil wants me to be more real in my blog posts. Meaning, I should quit taking prat falls at my kid's birthday party* and write about real stuff. Write about how I find babies annoying, or how I miss my aunt who passed away from liver disease a few weeks ago and, crud, now I'm all sad again, and there's probably, some other deep stuff that I need to dig up and share around like that. So, if next week, you read a melancholy post about a giraffe patterned wide tooth comb that was given to me when I was six, you can blame Wil Wheaton. I do.

*Although, that totally happened. For realsy.

Gratuitous Use Of Technology To Brag About My Kid's Gradual Change In Her Cellular Structure

My kids are upstairs, in the midst of a play date right now.  A good mother would probably have 1) scheduled this type of thing 2) served an organically made snack or at least whittled carrot slices into shapes of stars and hearts and probably also 3) roller skated calmly and gracefully at her daughter's birthday party last weekend.

Instead, I 1) didn't, and simply rudely accosted one of Katie's classmate's mother in the school parking lot, 2) noticed that Katie's friend was divvying up some fruit snacks she probably rummaged from her lunch box, so, out of guilt, I threw some cheese sticks in the middle of the table and 3) last week, totally barreled into the rink, hopped up on cupcakes and nostalgic Michael Jackson songs, wobbling on ankles that hadn't seen a quad skate since the age of 10, and squashed Katie like a pancake within minutes.

Don't worry, people. She's totally fine. I mean, it's not like you make it to the age of seven with a mother like me and not toughen up a bit, you know? Although, there was some bruising involved. I mean, Katie should probably work a little harder on actually growing that exoskeleton I keep suggesting. Kids, man, they never listen to their elders.

I'm All Talk About That Peeing Thing. For Now, Neighbors. For Now.

So, the other day, I was driving around my new Seattle neighborhood and realized that no matter what street I tried to drive down, no matter what time of day it was, the fact that people around here park on both sides of the street, turning perfectly good two way sized streets into one way sized streets while still driving on them like they're two way streets, I was constantly re-enacting that scene from Footloose.

You remember the one.


Yeah. That one. The scene where Kevin Bacon's stupid boy hormones get him caught up in a game of chicken with 18,000 pound tractors. Then, fate steps in and Kevin's shoelace gets caught (meaning he can't get his foot loose....) and bail out like a sane person would, so he ends up flipping the other tractor and his romantic antagonist into a nearby irrigation ditch. Which, in the end, will win Kevin the heart of the red booted maiden with the pre-Disney movie but not pre-Hans Christian Anderson name. Because, obviously, he's a classic hero with mad dancing skills.

Yep. Driving around here is exactly like being stuck in a temporal loop of Footloose Tractor Chicken. Well, exactly, except they replaced the farm tractors with Prius's and the boom box blaring Bonnie Tyler with gigantic cups of coffee.  And, instead of launching my antagonists into a nearby irrigation ditch, I bail at the first opportunity (because, duh, death!) and never win anything. Which, come to think of it, is probably why people keep parking in front of my house causing me to troll the streets looking for a spot wide enough to park a semi, because not only am I a horrible contestant in the Temporal Loop of Footloose Tractor Chicken, I also lack basic parallel parking skills.

And, really, once you take into consideration deja vu, 20/20, foreshadowing and all those other literary type elements, I probably should have realized my lack of chutzpah in racking up Chicken points was why the parking space in front of my house was always claimed. Because, you know, of that old saying penned by Howard Pyle. You remember, that classic saying everyone learned while reading Robin Hood under a blanket with a flashlight after bedtime? The one that goes, "Faint heart never won fair parking space in front of thy house no matter how many times thou sayest at the toppest of thy voice "Dudes! 'Tis my space! Verily, I peed in it, I trow!*"

Or, you know, something like that....

Point being, the lessons we learned from Footloose and Robin Hood still apply today.  People with chutzpah don't have to pee on public streets to claim their parking space. They just need to turn up the Bonnie Tyler and earn it.

Now, where did I put my tape deck?




*To paraphrase.