Yesterday my gracious houseguest and I were busy painting my kitchen. It turns out that Gracious Houseguest is a painting dynamo! I kind of knew that, but to see her in action…woo. My head spun, and it wasn’t just the paint fumes I was huffing. I think I was much less helpful than I should have been, because I was drinking champagne at two-thirty in the mother-humping afternoon. On a Wednesday.

There was a reason, of course–isn’t there always? Right before my friend Whippet went to Asia she threw herself a huge birthday party and received a bottle of German sparkling wine. Whippet’s husband wouldn’t drink it with her, so she came to pick up her kid, who was playing with my kid, and brought the champagne with her. “I thought you would drink this with me, SJ,” she said.

Right you are, my friend.

Anyway, the kitchen was a milquetoast shade of yellow when we moved in, and scuffed and cracked besides. It was one of the only rooms in the house that wasn’t freshly painted when we moved in, but this place is great so that’s the tiniest quibble. I am not anti-yellow, generally, but this shade was just a little too wan for my tastes, plus all the dirt and random nails. Now that I am looking at the pictures it looks bright, but it looked blah in person.

Companion was worried the color would be a little too deep, but I reminded him that when I lived in Ye Olde Ghetto Crown Hill house I painted the living room there Mexican Whorehouse Red (hi-gloss) with metallic gold trim around the windows. That was the TITS, yo. I wish I could have cut that room out and taken it with me.

BUT NO. Because now I have the kitchen that is absolutely the perfect shade of terra cotta. Not too orange, and not too pink. It will be perfect and warming for slogging through the long dim winters here. Now that we have a little extra cash, we will also be investing in some full-spectrum light bulbs.

Confidential to Anne in regards to the Dore Alley Fair….

Anne said:
“SJ, can I ask you a parenting question? Would you have gone to the Dore Alley Fair if you had had Franny with you? What about Strudel?”

To recap, the Dore Alley Fair is a street fair/gathering for gay men, many of whom wear leather outfits and accessories to the fair. I wrote about attending it recently in the entry before this one, and Anne left her question in the comments.

No, I would not bring either of my children, and here’s why. To me, the Dore Alley Fair seems to be a meeting about celebrating one aspect of sexuality. I think children are inherently sexual (or at least sensual) beings, but my children are pre-pubescent and not out in the world of sex with their peers yet, so I wouldn’t take them.

I also wouldn’t take them to a political convention or violent movies, because I don’t think that’s appropriate at this point in their lives either. It’s not the nudity. I brought the kids to the Fremont Solstice Parade, which features a naked bike ride and lots of random hippieness, but is about celebrating the solstice and has lots of cool floats and costumes that would interest kids. I just feel like something that’s totally about sex is not for my kids. If anyone else has something to say I’d be happy to hear it.

In Other News: Cat Soup

Hooray, I found one of the most disgusting and delightful cartoons ever, now on You Tube: Nekojiru Gekijou. The short of it is that it’s about a Japanese cartoon about a cat brother and sister who are so evil it’s astounding. The pigs in the cartoon are all second class citizens. I wonder what it all means? Japanese culture is an alluring mystery to me. I was always so jealous of my friend Manuel who got to visit there.

Also, poor Dr. Tran. Thanks to JP for that one.

In Other, Other News: I Am Rewarded For My Compulsive Spewing

In June, I entered my first ever writing contest with the intention of winning a free trip to BlogHer next year. The subject was summer vacations, and the story is an expanded version of a blog post here. I placed as a runner-up and got some seriously cool swag: a new digital camera, a tee-shirt, and a book. I would just link to the site, but I believe you have to log in to view them. I have reproduced my winning story under the cut. (Loyal readers: don’t worry, I have not married without telling you. I referred to my Companion as my husband to make it scan better. Also, it’s kind of lame and commercial–no swears. Boo!)

Budget Vacationing May Result in Coyote Poop

The last shred of my innocence, which I always assumed would be taken by accidentally clicking a sketchy link on the Internet, was stolen by my children as we crossed the state line from Washington State to Oregon.

This June, we lost our minds and decided to pack up the children and go off to a tiny little dot of a town in bone-dry Eastern Oregon called Mosier (population 430; one restaurant). I say we lost our minds because my ideal vacation involves a few critical features: sand, surf, and blended drinks with little plastic monkeys hanging off them. I am a city girl so I will sometimes pass over the beach for art museums and quality sushi in someplace like New York, but neither of these criteria was to be met this summer.

This year we were also attempting to vacation on a budget, which is one of those brilliant ideas up there with home dentistry and gritty television musical police dramas. So we decided, probably after the children were in bed and after a couple of glasses of wine, that it would be a splendid idea to borrow my father-in-law’s vacation house, which is located in the middle-of-nowhere Oregon. “We’ll spend just a little money on gas and a little money on groceries,” we smugly reasoned. “We’ll have a relaxing drive instead of being those suckers who are at the mercy of the airlines.” What we thought would be a quiet, peaceful weekend surrounded by beautiful cherry orchards in full fruit and the soothing sound of tree frogs turned out…differently than we expected.

According to Google Maps, the drive from Seattle to Mosier is almost five hours. Of course, when you have small children, the “relaxing drive” you hope for will be seriously extended by their refusal to eat or use the bathroom at anything approaching appropriate or convenient times. It took us four hours just to reach the state line, which takes two-and-a-half on a good day. Around hour two, I turned around to discover that our toddler Strudel had completely mosaic-ed the backseat with Cheerios and raisins. Impressively, no actual upholstery was visible under the snack trap explosion.

As we were finally crossing the state line, Strudel was whining apathetically so I glanced in the rear view and saw something flashing in the backseat. At first, I thought Strudel was waving a toy around. I sat up straighter and snuck a peek at the girls. I realized that her bored older sister, Franny, was repeatedly whacking Strudel with her cloth sequined headband, which was making Strudel grumpy enough to whine but not cry.

“If I see you doing that again, I WILL leave you at the side of the road,” I growled, feeling my vacationally-spastic stepfather’s spirit possess my body and speak through my mouth. “DO NOT HIT MY BABY. I WILL EAT. YOUR. HEAD.” Two sets of eyes went wide in my rear view. All was silent, finally. “Who is this Gorgon and what has she done with our mom?” I could see them thinking.

The harsh truth swept over me: now that my babies are five and one-and-a-half, they have turned on each other. I was torn. My first child, the child of my heart who is so special to me because she made me a mother in the first place, was thwacking her little sister, who was my sweet and innocent baby. They were supposed to grow up together as best friends, skipping and holding hands (and bringing me chocolate daily in my old age), and now that illusion was leaving me. I was completely overtaken by the urge to jettison my older child from the car to make her own way in the world as a cutthroat rogue, an infamous pirate, or one of those college students Greenpeace recruits.

“Do I really need more than one child?” I thought to myself, not entirely hypothetically. I recovered as we crossed the Columbia River, which marks the border between the two states, and entered Oregon a sadder, but wiser woman. A woman lamenting the fact that she didn’t routinely carry a cattle prod in her purse to subdue the children with.
After that rude shock, I was up for almost anything. We made a brief stop in Portland for lunch and to pick up the keys to the vacation house. “We’re almost there!” my husband and I shouted at each other as we cruised down the last stretch of highway, hitting repeat on our “Here Comes the ABC’s” CD by They Might Be Giants for the twelve jillionth time that day.

At first, we were relieved by the fact that we had vacationed in Mosier last summer as well, when Strudel was an inert blob of a three-month-old. We didn’t have to worry about directions or familiarizing ourselves with a new place, which is difficult with two explosively-energetic kids in tow. It did not occur to us that this cozy vacation house that was so relaxing last year with a baby would become an endurance contest this year between us and our shaved Tasmanian devil of a toddler.

My husband and I handled it by tag-teaming. If Strudel was awake, one of us was running after her to stop her from ripping up books, sticking her fingers in the electrical outlets, or tossing expensive-looking “objets d’art” down the stairs. Bedtime couldn’t come soon enough, but it was prolonged because the house was in such a private location that the floor-to-ceiling windows had no curtains. Since it was the summer solstice, the sun wouldn’t set until the ungodly hour of ten o’clock.

For all the trouble, there were some memorable moments after we arrived that day. We went on a walk and picked wildflowers, which decorated our dinner table that night. We saw some coyote poop, which was recognizable partly because it had fur in it. This is a sight not often seen in Seattle. We never saw them, but our sleep was occasionally interrupted by the howls of the coyotes. I would snap awake in bed with my heart pounding until I fell back to sleep just in time for the next round of howling. Their presence was a reminder that when away from the city I could actually be classified as “Grade-A Tasty Prey.”

The house was not childproofed, but thankfully it was not adult-proofed either. The cabinets were still as full of booze as they had been last year. After the scorching desert sun finally set and the kids settled and fell asleep, we decided to have some well-earned cocktails. Things were almost approaching romantic and relaxing on the patio as we looked over the cherry orchards towards Mount Hood.

“Hey,” my husband said.

“Hey there,” I replied.

“The kids are in bed,” he said coyly, wiggling his eyebrows.

“I know!” I said. We clicked glasses.

“Do you wanna…”

“YES?”

“…sleep?” he finished.

“Oh, hell yes. Goodnight,” I said.

We fell into bed, feeling like we had survived some kind of endurance contest. Taking one weekend away was entirely too short, and we were almost too tired to enjoy the trip. Next year we are planning on sand, ocean, cocktails, and an air-conditioned plane ride. Maybe the kids will even stay at Grandma’s house. We did make some good memories, though: we’ll always have coyote poop.