1. Back out of my long driveway
2. Use my tablet outdoors
3. Deny the mountains exist
4. Conceal the fact that I am 86.5% of the way through my transition to becoming a PNW vampire
5. Yell at my kids
6. Hide under the covers all day
7. Control my maniacal laughter
8. Remember to do anything productive
9. Open the blinds fast enough
10. Consider ever leaving this Garden of Eden
Around Town
Gearing up for the Second Coming
We weren’t gonna watch the game. We’re not football people. We hadn’t watched all season. Sundays are more a churchy day than a sports day for us. We were not jumping on the Seahawks band wagon on the day of the Super Bowl as though we could name even one player on the team, as though we had somehow earned those Lil’ Smokies or the guac and chips.
But the 12th man flags started to get to me on Friday and by Saturday morning, I had decided we’d better jump on the train as it zipped by. Church was a sea of blue and green, with the lone Broncos fan conducting the meeting boldly in his orange tie. I didn’t see any actual Seahawks gear but it was obvious that people had extracurricular activities on the brain.
So, after church Dan and I sat the kids down for a lesson in the rules of football and we all watched their first game together. Luckily, I’d just turned the cable back on for the winter Olympics. Squee!!
We didn’t teach the kids every possible rule of football and of course the first thing to happen was a safety. What?! We got to explain a lot of fun things that night and the kids came away die-hard Seahawks fans.
Tomorrow the boys in blue and green make their triumphant return to Seattle and there’s going to be a big parade, which we will not attend, and a bunch of families are playing hookie from school, which we will not be doing. But Seahawks fans and wanna-be Seahawks fans will be wearing their football gear tomorrow. I didn’t think much of this until I picked my kids up from school today and saw the staggering number of kids wearing Seahawks shirts and jerseys. And today is only Seahawks Eve!
So, since this bandwagon makes stops at Target, I just thought I’d “look” and “see” what they had. And many dollars later, I walked out with 5 Super Bowl championship T-shirts. Magoo and Wanda are elated.
Wanda has been obsessed with The End of Days lately, asking me when the last day will be and whether the sky will turn all silver. It’s slightly creepy but makes for interesting conversation and I told her that the last day will be when Jesus comes again, and not in a manger but with angels and fanfare and all that jazz.
So today, she was talking about how much she LOVED her Seahawks shirt and how she would wear it tomorrow for the big parade that she’s still not convinced we’re not going to and then she said, “But then you need to wash it.”
“Okay.”
“Because on the last day, when Jesus comes again, I want to dress like Seahawks.”
“Alright.”
Dan says she’s the first person he’s ever met who has her outfit planned for the Second Coming.
And she will look amazing.
The Numbers
Dan and I go to “MegaCorp” each year for a health screening. It’s a Know Your Numbers campaign. They want you to know all your numbers, your good and bad cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, BMI… circumference… etc.
The past three years have been awesome because all of my numbers keep getting better and better. I’ve been working hard and I’ve been blessed with increasing good health. When I left the house today, my main goal was to wear something cute, but light. But, as I caught my reflection in the mirror on my way out the door, I realized that I looked a bit like a mime, or like I should be eating a baguette. Maybe I should be miming eating a baguette.
The numbers were good. I especially kick at blood pressure, like seriously KICK. It is one of my greatest talents.
When we finish getting our numbers, we always sit with a wellness coach who tells Dan to eat more fish and do some AquaZumba or something. He smiles and nods and dreams of Cocoa Puffs. Then she turns to me and I start going OFF about how far I’ve come and how often I work out and how much I fully know about nutrition and all its nutritiousness. I coach her a bit. Then we leave.
Knowing I can lay it on a little thick and trying not to turn this into a Know Your Numbers So You Can Tell a Wellness Coach How Totally BOSS You Are” campaign, my big goal was to go the entire session without saying, “triathlon.”
And I made it. I will take a bow. Silently. While twirling my baguette.
We’d been fasting for our blood draw so we headed out for brunch at a place where we could replenish our fats and cholesterols as quickly as possible. If cholesterol has a flavor, I think it would be hollandaise sauce. So I got the Eggs Benedict.
Most of the meals came with “toast and hash browns.”
This is slightly disturbing because, you know, when you put quotes around something, it means that the thing with the quotes does not need to resemble the words inside the quotes in any way.
Ex. My kids like to “flush” the toilet and “clean” their rooms while wearing “perfectly ironed” “clothes” and singing “hymns” translates to My kids like to use and walk away from the toilet and throw junk around in their rooms while wearing wrinkly t-shirts, forgetting to wear pants, and singing the Spiderman theme song at the top of their lungs.
Luckily, they were better at cooking than punctuation. Oh, for yum.
Also, I think it’s worth mentioning that they use a stuffed bear with a tank of helium shoved up his… um body… with the nozzle jammed out his ear to fill balloons. So, there’s that.
On the way back to MegaCorp, I told Dan I was worried that maybe I’d damaged my lungs on our latest scuba diving excursion. It was our first night dive, first Puget Sound dive, first cold water dive, first wet suit dive, and first dive where we did not have an ever-living clue what we were doing. I think I held my breath at one point while ascending a few feet. My lungs have ached ever since.
Dan encouraged me to make a doctor’s appointment.
I then said, “Speaking of diving, I heard on NPR this morning that we can go shark diving in the Point Defiance Aquarium. Let’s do it!”
The life drained from his eyes.
“What kind of sharks?”
“All the kinds! Dangerous ones and not dangerous ones and kind of dangerous ones. It will be so awesome.”
He was not feeling the awesome. After I get back from the lung doctor, we’ll totally have to revisit this discussion. I mean, we need something to brag about next year with our Know Your Numbers health coach.
Beautiful
Today, as we’re leaving the soccer field, he asks if he can play at the skate park on the way home. He asks this most days after soccer practice and I always say no. Sometimes we’re in a rush to get somewhere. Usually we’re hungry, and generally there are a slew of tweenish and teenish boys and their female hangers-on doing cool tricks, smoking, and proving that they’re hardcore by dropping f-bombs as frequently as possible.
*Disclaimer – I am sure there are other lovely young people at the park skating, humming Taylor Swift songs, and saying things like “gosh” and “shucks,” and shunning all legal addictive substances, but they just don’t pick up as loudly on my Parental Freakout Meter. I’m sure YOUR kid, if he were hanging out at the skate park, is the Taylor Swiftiest and I’m not accusing you of raising a ruffian. I am accusing the other parents… who are not you. Please don’t email me about this, Citizens of My Town, USA.*
So, Magoo asks why he can’t hang out there and I say that it’s because there are bigger kids smoking and swearing and it’s not a great environment for him. And then he starts asking questions about smoking and addiction and cancer and all things cigarette-related that I’ve ever told him to scare him from ever ever putting a burning bundle of who-knows-what into his mouth and inhaling.
And then he says, “Can, you know, like, beautiful people smoke?” He’s sort of hemming and hawing. “Like, you know, beaut… Like if there was a beautiful…” Here he sort of trails off, gathering his thoughts and starts again.
“Monday at the fair I saw a woman who looked just like you and she was smoking and I was confused because I didn’t think that people who looked like you could smoke.”
I was quiet, trying not to choke up. So, when my eight-year-old boy thinks of what a beautiful woman looks like, he pictures me? I’ve heard stories where old men talked about their beautiful angel mothers and I think it’s sweet but I always thought they had to be old and looking back in retrospect to see their mother that way.
I’m not the hottest chick on the block. Rarely do random men flirt with or even really give me the time of day. I think what’s beautiful to Magoo and what’s beautiful to me about this story is that he knows I love him and that there’s a light in my eyes for him and that I’m trying to be the best that I can be most of the time. Beauty to Magoo is an effort towards goodness and that makes me so proud.
Of course I could not mention this to him. I had to ignore the accidental compliment, act cool, and tell him that, yes, beautiful people can smoke, but that over time it tends to make them less beautiful and more enslaved to addiction and disease.
And then I walked with an extra bounce in my step the rest of the night. That’s what beautiful people do, when they are not busy smoking.
Dan Turns Ten
I don’t necessarily love baseball, unless m’boy is playing it. It’s never been a passion of mine. But, I will admit there was something thrilling about running the bases at Safeco Field with Dan. It’s where the Mariners play and where we go once a year to eat hot dogs and ignore the baseball men unless they do something really cool, like score a home run or spit while they’re being featured on the Jumbotron.
Dan hit his 10 year mark as an employee of The MegaCorp with all of his digits, grey matter and scruples mostly intact and so they invited us to a gigantic party at The Field in honor of his… and about a billion other people’s accomplishments.
This party had everything.
Giant shiny numbers.
Homerun contests, bands, food, baseball stars we did not recognize even though they have streets named after them.
Fake mustaches.
Pictures of pictures of us on the Jumbotron. (We were not spitting.)
Caricature artists.
Dugouts full of baseball snacks.
Locker room access.
Slides into home.
Photo booths with signs that said MOM or WOW, which is basically the same thing.
Bored baseball players at press conferences.
Seriously, one of the best date nights ever.
Mine
One thing is certain. The Nintendo DS is mine. I purchased it with my birthday money a couple of years ago in a fit of My-Parents-Never-Let-Me-Have-A-Game-Boy-And-Now-Is-MY-Time exuberance. Dan said I wouldn’t use it and that I should just buy a couple of new games for my phone. He was wrong. I did use it. For about a month. Then I bought some new games for my phone so I’d have one less device to carry around with me.
Magoo has since adopted the DS and feels strongly that it belongs to him. I will say again. I bought it with my own dee ay em en birthday money. The DS is mine. If I have to battle vocally for it in the back of a hay wagon with Magoo, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, and all the surviving Beatles, I will sing with my dying breath, “I’m a lover, not a fighter, but she’s mine. The doggone DS is mine.”
Last week we were chasing the bus in the swagger wagon. We do this sometimes. It’s fun to walk up the hill and get on the bus, but it really gets the blood pumping to drive slightly above the speed limit in hot pursuit of a fleeing yellow vehicle full of bobble-headed school kids, stopping behind the bus at each stop, shoving your kid out the van door and hoping he can run up alongside it and get on before it pulls off to the next stop. Super exciting stuff there.
I kid you not. Sometimes it’s taken two or three of these attempts before the driver has seen Magoo running up to catch the bus so he has to jump back in the van and we squeal out in pursuit again. Radness.
Well this particular morning we caught up to the bus and as it slowed, I slowed and dumped my seven-year-old out the sliding door. He ran like his life depended on it and in his haste, MY Nintendo DS slipped from the kangaroo pocket of his baseball hoodie and crashed to the sidewalk.
DSs are not allowed at school. As per school policy.
DSs are not allowed in his kangaroo pocket. As per my policy.
He knew he was busted. He started moving in slow motion, staring directly into my eyes as he bent down and slowly picked up the device as though trying to hypnotize me into not seeing what he was doing with his hands waaay down there on the ground.
Always maintain eye contact. Never surrender. His eyes were super wide though and he had this half-smile that said, “Oops?”
Then he pocketed the device and ran for the bus, making it just in time for a swift getaway.
The thing is, after I dropped Laylee off at her bus stop, I still had just enough time to drive over to Magoo’s school in the pouring rain and stand be-umbrellaed, waiting curbside as the bus pulled up to the school. As he stepped off the bus, I smiled at him, my palm outstretched. He dropped his head in defeat and slapped the DS in my hand, knowing it would be a long LONG time before he would be reunited with his beloved again.
Hey wait – MY beloved.
On Magoo’s Mind – The Crushing Weight of Monarchical Responsibility
We’ve been going to Costco for the past 11 years lately and each time we go, we have to get our receipt “checked” by the receipt checking person at the exit. They don’t really check. But they are good with a marker. They look searchingly, even longingly into your eyes, swipe the marker down the receipt, and hand it back to you. Sometimes they mumble, “Have a good day.” Usually they seem to mean it.
I love Costco. They have lunch for $1.50 and ice cream bars as big as your head, if you’re into that sort of thing and… A NEW CAR!
Now if you are under the age of, say, me, and you hand them a receipt, it is unwritten or perhaps written Costco policy that the employee must draw a picture on the back of the receipt, unless you’re that guy in the blue polo shirt who hates fun and the laughter of babies. All other Costco employees will draw a smiley face if Wanda or Laylee or Magoo hands them the receipt.
Over the last 10 years, I’ve seen these drawings escalate to the point that I think you need to have previous experience as a caricature or police sketch artist in order to do the receipt checking at Costco. Lately, they always draw pictures of my actual kids, sometimes with cat ears or a pig nose or holding a balloon, but the pictures have gotten very elaborate.
Today, I was with Wanda and Magoo and we got this:
It is Wanda as a princess, obviously, and Magoo as a prince.
Wanda: Look Magoo! I’m a princess and you’re a prince. It’s so NICE!
Me: Thank you for checking to make sure I got both cartons of free-range brown-because-brown-eggs-make-me-better-than-you eggs listed on my receipt, except, wait, you didn’t look at the front part of the receipt because you were creating the greatest Costco receipt sketch of all time.
Wanda: You’re like a PRINCE!
Magoo (shaking his head and rolling his eyes with an exhausted sigh): If they asked me to be a real prince, I would never do it, and not just because it’s embarrassing. You have to make so many choices about so many things. No way.
So, today, in the parking lot of our fair Costco, Magoo pre-abdicated the throne. I’m not sure what to do about this. He is my only son. But the crushing weight of monarchical responsibility has obviously weighed heavily upon his mind for some time now. He had his answer ready without a moment’s pause. It will not be he who ascends to the Thompson throne. We must seek another.
A Mysterious Birthday Party
Laylee is TEN! Her oldness and lack of being young astound me. You feel me?
Laylee’s a book nut, so her birthday parties often revolve around favorite literary masterpieces. A couple of years ago we did a Princess Academy theme and this year it was The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. If you haven’t read the series, I highly recommend the books. They’re fun, sweet, smart and exciting. Dan actually likes them better than the Harry Potter series.
Book parties work well for me because they’re fun, inexpensive, close to home, and they get all of Laylee’s friends reading something together.
This series is about a secret society of extraordinarily gifted children, recruited by Mr. Nicholas Benedict to save the world. They are fighting against an evil man named Ledroptha Curtain who has built a “Whisperer” machine that controls the minds of all the people it broadcasts to. Much of the work the children do involves solving riddles and puzzles, and escaping the evil 10-men, a group of suit-wearing assassins.
So for our party, I recruited Laylee’s friends to help us build an anti-whisperer (made of spray-painted garbage found in my recycling bin and garage) to stop his evil plot.
The invitation read:
Laylee is turning 10 and we’re celebrating with an adventure.
Mr. Nicholas Benedict has an important mission that only these girls can complete. I’m afraid to say that the fate of the entire world rests on their shoulders.
They must use their greatest skills, cunning and teamwork to stop the mysterious Mr. Curtain who plans to take over first Duvall and then the world. Mwahaha!
And… they’ll only have 2 hours to do it. We will be going on the adventure rain, snow, or shine so dress appropriately. It is likely the clues will lead us all over town. We will come back to the library at the end for cake, if we make it out alive.
(Please consider reading the first book in the Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart prior to the event, although this is not required.)
-Sincerely,
Number 2
The day of the party, I stood outside of the library to greet the girls, dressed as Number 2 in my mustard yellow clothes and red wig, chomping on a carrot. (Number 2 always nibbles on something because she never sleeps and therefore needs more energy to keep her going.)
I checked them in on my clipboard and sent them to our base in the library meeting room, where Dan, dressed as Mr. Benedict, greeted them and gave them a briefing on the seriousness of the situation and what would be required of them.
Periodically, he would fall asleep, as the narcoleptic Mr. Benedict is prone to do, and I would catch him before he hit the ground. Amazing acting skills on that Dan Thompson. He told the girls to start their quest by speaking to the person who gives directions to dead trees.
The Librarian! She gave the girls their first clue:
The numbers represented letters and number of words in each line represented a number. So we ended up with a call number that took us to a book about firefighters. The firefighter book had the following clue.
So we headed to the fire station, where we found a piece to our machine and another clue.
So, the burned edges work with the fire station clue because it’s supposed to be a relic taken from a burning building. But once I started burning edges, I was physically incapable of stopping so I burned all of them. It gives them a certain mystery and I really really like lighting things on fire.
On the way back to the base to decipher the clue, I realized that the party was going much too quickly so I told the girls I had seen a 10-man near the library and we would need to take the long way around, several blocks out of our way to avoid being seen and possibly captured. We marched all over town before ending up back at the library.
They solved this clue by figuring out the missing words and then using the first letter of each word to form a new word, “GRANGE”.
“THE GRANGE!” they all yelled. “I KNOW THAT PLACE!”
So we headed to the Grange, all the girls thrilled that they were figuring things out on their own.
The final clue led us (maybe too obviously) to the giant clock located out front of City Hall.
Now, at this point, the girls thought I had made up everything about how the 10-men were here in Duvall, following us around, trying to thwart us, but as we headed out the library doors, they saw a suspicious man in a dark suit and glasses standing across the street, right in front of the clock… with a briefcase… and watches on both wrists.
“It’s a 10-MAN!” they squealed and dropped to the floor inside the library.
My friend Mike, an actor who I’d asked to help with the party, was right on time. I told the girls I’d distract him so they could go retrieve the clue. They watched with bated breath as I crossed the street, bumped into Mike and ran off down Main Street, with him in hot pursuit. When we were out of site down an alley, the girls hurried across the street and found the clue tucked under some shrubbery near the clock.
We didn’t get a picture of Mike chasing me, or even one of the 10-man, but Dan’s cousin Jeanie who was visiting for the weekend depicted it like this:
The final piece of the machine was the back end of a flashlight. When screwed on, the machine lit up and then we could follow the final clue and celebrate.
Overall, I think it was a success. One girl mentioned to me that it was pretty embarrassing to be walking around town with me in that wig so I told her to walk further ahead if it made her more comfortable but, for the most part, they completely played along.
The party favors were little red buckets, meant to be similar to the red bucket from the book, carried around by main character Kate, full of supplies that can be used to get you out of any sticky situation. I gave them each a flashlight, a cool pencil, some licorice “rope,” an eraser, and a kaleidoscope, because Kate carries a kaleidoscope that secretly doubles as a spy glass.
If I had it to do over again, I would have made more clues and made them harder to decipher. I would also have used Morse code. But I can’t really complain. Laylee’s happy with how it turned out, and the world has been saved.
You’re welcome.
Stop! Person Who Made a Poor Choice and Stole Something!
I would title this post, Stop! Thief!, but that would mean labeling one of my children and from what I’ve read in these here parenting manuals, there is no such thing as a “bad child,” just a child who makes poor choices. Although, if you read Dickens, there is such a thing as a “poor child” and according Robert Kiyosaki, there is also such thing as a “poor dad.” But that’s neither here nor there. The sweet little fruit of my loins shoplifted this afternoon, bless her heart.
Wanda is not highly diabolical. In fact, she’s not even the most diabolical three-year-old I know. She is an addict, always looking for her next sugar fix. And her head often resembles a muffin. One might say she was muffin-headed. But she pulled a pretty smooth con today.
So, we were at the grocery store today, buying the supplies for the OhMyGoshICan’tTellYouHowMuchILoveThem meals from my meal planning service and Wanda was a big help. She helped me throw the giant butternut squash on top of the other produce. She helped me develop stronger resolve to eat healthy by asking me to buy every single processed food in the entire store. She helped me load items onto the conveyer belt. And then she helped herself to a baby bottle pop.
I’m not sure where she hid it or why I bought her a coat with pockets, but I didn’t notice the thievery until we’d driven home and I went to unload her from her seat. She was grinning from ear to ear and her entire body, car seat and inside the car seat buckle mechanism were covered with pink toxic sugar dust. She was SO proud.
I didn’t know quite how to explain to a barely three-year-old pumpkin face about the wrongs of stealing. But I did know we needed a memorable lesson, so I gave her a simple definition and my best “I’m disappointed but I still love you but oh NOOOO this was not a good choice” talk.
We drove back to the store. She gave a muffled apology to the Customer Service manager who, coincidentally, was also her church nursery teacher last year. Then I made her empty out the dollar and twenty-five cents from her allowance envelope and give all of it in payment for the pilfered merchandise.
She was slightly stricken but handled it all pretty well, frequently burying her face in my sleeve.
Then our friend handed her the candy she’d just purchased and I DUN DUN DUN… took it away.
That’s when the emotionally fueled detenatory convulsion occurred. I carried her from the grocery store, sobbing and yelling, garnering pitying looks from strangers. I’m not sure if they pitied me or Wanda. Maybe both.
It’s so hard to be a three-year-old felon. Even if you don’t have to wear hand cuffs. Even if your mug shot looks like this.
Three-year-old felons persons who have committed felonies don’t ever ever get to eat the spoils of their offenses.
How Dare They?
I have a special relationship with snow. I grew up in Canada with more snow than most sane people can handle. And I loved it. I love the smell of snow, the look of snow, snow games and snow treats. I love building things with snow and getting frozen solid, because when you’re frozen solid, you need cocoa to thaw you out.
My current morning alarm tone is the song “Let it Snow!” and every single morning when I hear it, my heart skips a beat excitedly, and then I feel let down and musically lied to. Of course it’s not snowing. It almost never snows here.
I know I’m not unique. Nearly everyone dreams of a White Christmas. I’m certainly not the only one in my family who loves snow. My kids love it so much that they become enraged whenever it doesn’t snow. That’s a lot of days of rage, living in the rain capital of the US.
As much as Magoo loves snow, he hates those who would seek to destroy it.
“You know who are the worst people ever?”
People who don’t let your newly potty trained 3-year-old cut in line at a public restroom? I think. Voldemort?
“It’s those guys who come through with those awful SNOW DOZERS and steal all the snow. I can’t stand those guys.”
“You mean, the city workers who drive the plows to clear the roads so people can drive after a storm?”
“Yeah. Those guys are the worst.” He shakes his head with disgust.
They are pretty nasty. It’s as though they don’t even like fun. Or joy. Or the laughter of children. I bet if you looked deep into their eyes, you’d find nothing but a cheerless void. And then you’d turn to stone. Never to drink hot cocoa again.
I would like to add them to our list of local villains. This list already includes:
1. Firefighters, the guys who steal all the fire from our houses. These clowns are so bad, they even go out of their way to prevent fires from happening in the first place.
2. Waste “management.”
3. The city maintenance workers who slash and destroy all the delicious blackberry vines that grow across the sidewalks.
4. Chiropractors. Don’t even get me started on chiropractors.