Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Archives for July 2008

Into the Drink

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I dare you to find a more attractive picture of a specimen of humanity than this here likeness.Guess who swam across a lake at 7:00 this morning and now has algae-looking stuff in unmentionable places? Not naming names. Follow my eyes.

I’ve been casually training for a triathlon I’m not going to compete in because my ladies are doing it and I’m nothing if not a follower. Last Saturday and then again this morning we worked on our open water swimming. There are many signs that we are taking this athletic challenge of athleticism in a very seriously serious manner, which include but are not limited to:

-Giggling like wee girls.

-Squealing as we stand at the edge of the frigid drink and then eventually needing to be pushed in (This will go over well on race day, I imagine. The shotgun goes off. There’s a flurry of splashtastic activity. One lone spaztard in my heat stands with her arms folded, dancing from one foot to the other, “OOOoooooo… but it’s so COOOOLDD. Tee-hee-hee.” Grin. “I hope I win.”).

-Doing the back stroke most of the way, even though one woman warned us that when she switched to backstroke in her last race, the medi-kayak was deployed to see what was wrong with her.

-Periodically swimming up next to another athletic athlete and saying, “Shark Week,” in a most menacing way.

I’ll be going out of town when the other ladies take the plunge, ½ mile swim followed by an 18 mile bike ride followed by a 3.5 mile run and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was just a teeny bit glad in the smallest corner of my heart to have a good excuse for my athletic truancy.

But it’s fun to train with them. Mostly. In the middle part. For a couple of minutes. After my body is numb and before my brain is filled with green water.
Trust me the lake is much bigger, much colder, and much more full of dead bodies than it appears in this picture.
There was even one sublime moment during Saturday’s swim when a duck swam past me in a not creepy, we’re-all-part-of-the-great-circle-of-life, kind of way and then a bald eagle swooped down and grabbed a fish right out of the water and glided off to munch on it’s still beating heart.

If I were Native American or even had a Native American name like Pocahontas or John Smith, I think that moment would have moved me into postponing my trip so I could complete the race, a mystical sign from my animal brothers that I had raw fish left to clutch or races to eat or something.

Alas, I am the whitest white person I know so what it actually did after the initial “WOW” wore off was remind me that lakes contain things, living things, things that are cold, wet, slimy and potentially man-eating. If a fish were to bump into me while I was swimming, I feel fairly certain that I would make no sound as my heart stopped and I slipped ignominiously to Davy Jones’ locker.

Not thinking of my neurotic aquatic terror, following the first race in which I had gotten a tiny piece of water in my eye, I went to Tarzhay and purchased a pair of goggles so that I could see WHILE SWIMMING. IN THE LAKE. WHERE THE FISH AND DEAD BODIES LIVE.

I’ve always been scared of dead bodies under dark water but after watching that one scary movie where Harrison Ford plays a villain and you spend the whole movie asking “Han Solo, why’s it gotta go down like this Homey?” I now know that dead bodies under water are true.

So today as I swam along, I kept catching glimpses of my paler than death, whiter than normal white people arm flashing by as I swam. At which time I would die just a little, thus partially self-fulfilling prophecy, and scream under water, sure I had seen the floating remains of some poor victim of Mr. Solo. This would result in the inhalation of said water and in a fervent vow to never ever EVER again open my eyes in those way-too-clear goggles of terror. Then I would swim with eyes closed way off course until my compatriots yelled my name and pointed back to shore. I repeated this zig-zag pattern all over the lake, getting worked up to the point where I was sure that the skirt on my tankini was really a giant strand of semi-sentient sea weed tangled around my legs and bent on my most hideous destruction.

One of my friends told me after the swim that she was only in it to get an athletic body like the other triathletes she knows. I thought about this and I realized that hers is an unrealistic goal for someone like me.

People who eat cheese will never have triathlete bodies. I mean, they can sample cheese betimes at cheese tasting events. But I’m fairly sure that people who EAT cheese will never look like that.

That’s why I’m in it for the glory.

Faces in my Book

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I have been thinking about it for a while now and have come to the conclusion that Facebook = one of the best things ever.

This afternoon I had lunch with a friend of mine from junior high band. She lives in Canada with her husband. We haven’t spoken for 15 years. We found each other on Facebook, she happened to be coming to Seattle on vacation and voila, there I was in a gelato shop downtown with my whiny kids, telling junior high band stories.

For some reason my kids thought the stories were boring and for some reason Laylee resented being toted all over town with an ear infection. After 10 days of home-bound sickness, 3 doctor’s visits and the start of a second round of antibiotics, I decided that we just had to all become portable again. Not sure it was the wisest decision but it was so good to see my friend again and meet her awesome husband.

There are people you were sure would do great things with their lives and it’s so much fun to find out that they actually did. It’s especially fun when your 3-year-old son falls in love with your friend’s husband and refuses to let go of his hand while your normally gregarious daughter spends the whole time you’re together scowling and refusing to talk to anyone unless it’s to tell them how boring they are.

On Sunday I found myself talking on the phone with one of my best friends from high school who I hadn’t heard from in years. Where did I find out he was still alive? That’s right. Facebook.

I’ve also used it to hook up with friends from film school, 6th grade frenemies who have miraculously turned into unbeastly adult-type people who will talk to me now even if I don’t have an ESPRIT school bag, and old coworkers.

It’s like an online matchmaking service for your past, a high school reunion without the awkward moments, bad dancing or drunkishness.

What’s the most unlikely relationship you’ve resurrected on Facebook?

My Junk is Your Junk if You Pay Me For It

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I have a lot of useless junk in my house and I want to have money to buy new better junk that won’t become useless for at least another 5 minutes. I enjoy sorting through my junk multiple times and then sitting around all day trying to convince strangers that it has great worth to them even though to me personally it is, alas, junk. I especially love to haggle over a fiddy-cent price difference.

garage-saleSo my neighbors and I decided to host a garage-sale-ic event later this summer. I’ve been piling all garbage that is not compostable or recyclable up in my garage in the hopes that someone will want to give me money for it. I’ve scoured the house from top to bottom looking for any little thing that might not be enriching my health and happiness fully or that might be slowly poisoning me or my children to death with its questionably toxic toxicity. Phthalates in plastic, lead in paint, parabens in beauty products, mysterious things that clean really well in cleaning products and must therefore be carcinogenic.

So the Magic Date Ball, the too-short shirts, the old nail polish, and the stacking rings all had to go. I was going to wait until September to do a sale with my whole street but a friend asked me to bring a few things over to bulk up her garage sale this weekend and I decided to consider it a practice run.

I learned from my previous mistakes and decided not to dress up like a millionaire prom queen for the sale. A couple of weekends ago I went garage-saleing dressed in my nicest possible mom clothes and no one had any pity or mercy on me when it came to haggling. They gave me that look that said, “If you can dress like that, then you don’t need to get a deal from me.” I tried to give them a look that said, “But I got it at Ross! On clearance! And I just want my husband to think I’m hot for the day!” But it didn’t translate well. I was like a character on the show What Not To Wear — Garage Sale Edition, where all the rules are the exact opposite of the conventional show. So this weekend I wore ripped worn-out cords, an old t-shirt, no makeup and no jewelry.

Besides the toys and household items I was selling, I pulled together all the non-natural cleaning products and personal hygiene items I’d been planning to toss, marked them 50 cents or a dollar each and tossed them in big Tupperwares, not expecting anyone to buy them.

Surprise surprise! They were my biggest sellers. Seriously. People were all over my lightly used lotions, cleaners and nail polishes. Sweet.

In fact my favorite customer was an elderly woman with an Eastern European accent, which I will exaggerate slightly in the following dialogue to give you a feel for the way she talked and for added comic effect, who had her eye on my box of cleaners. There were 15-20 bottles in the Tupperware, marked at 50 cents each. She stood there for a while inspecting each one. Pinesol, softscrub with bleach, windex, stainless steel cleaner. She looked thoughtful.

“I give you two dollars for whole box,” she offered.

“Sure,” I said, glad to avoid a trip to the dump. “Let me help you with these.” I started to pull the bottles out of their case.

“No!” she said sternly. “I want the box.”

“Oh. Well. The box doesn’t come with them.”

“WHAT?! NO BOX!? I only wanted them because uff the box. This is horrible.”

“It’s my kids’ toy box. It’s worth more than 2 dollars.”

“Well this is horrible! I don’t want it now.” She started walking away and then called out over her shoulder, “Unless you give me all uff them for $1.50.”

“Um. Sure.”

“I luff you! You are vunderful girls!”

As she continued to shop through our junk, she would periodically call out how vunderful we were… because we gave her a 50 cent discount and because she LUFFED us.

As you can tell, I am a master bargainer/negotiator and saleswoman. I worked the sale hard, although not as hard as my friend’s cute 12-year-old son who walked past people muttering under his breath about Xbox games being the best thing ever and why didn’t anyone want his Xbox games? Didn’t people play Xbox games anymore? Wasn’t it great that we had Xbox games available at this very garage sale?

Can you guess who would get the money if any of his games sold? Yep. I almost had mercy and bought one from him. Almost, but not quite. The last thing we need is one more electronic game in this house. With Dan and his Call of Duty addiction and me with my love of the Wii, it’s a shock we ever speak to each other anymore.

Last night I created a Mii that looks like a demonic butt-ugly mutant and Laylee has named her Floraburr. Whenever I think of or see her, I laugh until my guts liquefy and drain out the corners of my eyes as hysterical funny-farm-worthy tears. Aaaahhh, the joy of my own electronical hilarity.
floraburr

Summer is Upon Us

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And the blogging is slim. There’s just so much going on around here. Who can find the time to record it? Therefore I will offer you a photographic essay to explain my absence from the sphere of blogism.

The kids have started swimming lessons and they’re in a class together, although we’ve had to skip twice this week due to the near-death plague ravaging their bodies. This is probably for the best since at the last lesson Magoo’s face nearly exploded and it’s such a cute face, I’d like to keep it intact.
penney14
We’ve been cavorting with pirates.
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Running all around.
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Eating more than we should.
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Bonding as a family.
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And going on late night walks around our neighborhood in the perfect Puget Sound summer weather.
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I’ll totally have more time for blogging when the school year starts and I’m teaching the youth at church, serving as the co-communications board member for the PTA, teaching at Magoo’s co-op preschool, running SeattleMomBlogs.com, and working on my other writing projects.

Points for Health

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Do any of your friends spontaneously plan a family fun 5K for all their girls when they’re 38 weeks pregnant? Do they print out their own number stickers for all of their friends and provide a time-keeping board, finish line tape, water, snacks and placement ribbons?

Mine do. I know. You are jealous.
5k
I have a group of 20 friends who’ve formed an accountability group to help each other with our goals of healthy weight loss. We get together weekly with our leader who is a personal trainer and fitness instructor and cute as a stack of buttons and we talk about how we’re doing and encourage each other to put the chocolate down and get moving.

At the end of this summer we’re planning a 2-day healthy girls’ retreat as a reward for all our hard work. The trick is that you can’t come unless you earn the right to be there. You can earn it by losing 20 pounds, at one point per pound or you can earn points other ways.

Each week over the summer we have a challenge. One week it was to drink enough water each day, and by enough I mean enough that you’re running to the bathroom every 15 minutes like Magoo, except unlike Magoo you make it to the potty most of the time before your personal flood waters erupt. One week we had to work out 5 days. This week we need to remember to take a multivitamin every day.

For each challenge you complete, you get a point. If you look at my butt, you’ll find that I’m getting most of my points this way, not on the scale. You get half a point for each meeting you attend which is hardly a chore as it consists of chatting with your girlfriends and giving each other snaps for each time you got up off the couch to do something other than head to the fridge.

The biggest way to earn points fast is by entering fitness events. I got two points for that 5K where I slaughtered that old lady. Today I got two more for walking 3.2 miles around an elementary school track while again chatting with my girlfriends. I am very good at this.

I’m number 8 in the back and I got a ribbon for “perseverance.” It means I came in last place but I’m cuter than anyone else except the pregnant lady. Yes. It really does. The pregnant lady can’t win because she was handing out the ribbons and doing all the work and there’s no prize for doing all the work. Kind of like at my house.

So now I’m at 10 points with 6 weeks left and I’ve got to melt me some serious calories or jump on every challenge there is and run a marathon. There is no way I’m missing this weekend.

I’d also like to lose just a little weight so my Wii Fit will stop gently hinting at how rotund I’ve become. There’s a fine line between motivation and 7th-grade-worthy harassment.

Young Biblical Scholars

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On the way home from church yesterday we had this conversation.
moses
Me: What did you learn about in nursery Magoo?
Magoo: Bubbles.
Me: Fun. Did you have a lesson?
Magoo: Bubbles.
Me: You did a picture of Moses. Did you learn about him?
Magoo: Yes.
Me: Awesome. Was he a prophet?
Magoo [looking at me like I’m a total MORON]: NO. He’s a BABY!

Laylee was a little more willing to share her great knowledge. I guess they learned about Jesus healing the ten lepers. She said that Jesus probably felt pretty medium about the whole thing. Happy that the one guy said thank you but sad about the other nine. So, just sort of medium.

He was a baby too at one time, as evidenced by our Little People Nativity. But it seems that he grew to maturity, at least old enough to heal people and feel medium about it. I hope Moses will too.