Request

***UPDATE!***
Tim is feeling better and is finished with some unpleasant treatments, so yay. We're still praying for Rachael to be able to relax and not obsess about the darker possibilities of the past few weeks. The doctor believes it was a one-time thing and that Tim should never ever pick up a cigarette again. Well, duh, Tim. (We love you!) He isn't even much of a smoker, but there it is.

They are moving on to bigger and better things, with a baby kicking like mad and a baby shower on the horizon. So thanks for your prayer, internet. Keep it coming, we all appreciate it and need it in this crazy world.


Hey everyone who might happen by here.
Could you pray for my friend Tim and his wife, Rachael? He had a blot clot problem tonight and is in the ER. She's about 6 months pregnant and beside herself, of course. They are good friends, crazy wacko artsy intense goofball types and two of the best I've ever met... prayer would be good.

Olympics, Baby

The Olympics are a little sip of caffeine for my mood. I love to watch people do well, focus, do so-so, lose well, flip out, talk trash and lose it all. It's like classical music but popular.

Michael Phelps has to be one of the most spectacular pieces of humanity ever to train himself silly. All the swimmers are ridiculous. Gymnasts, too. It's impressive, really, that these people found what they are built for and then focused on it to the extent that they are able to do things no one else has.

I love the sports where things are concrete: you went faster, or not. Unlike performing in artistic endeavors, there is no room for subjective critique. Obviously, I like the arts. It's just that years (and years. And... seriously, 20 years since high school? CRAP!) of training can ALLLLLLmost squash out of a person the ability to enjoy their pursuits without constantly looking for the next thing to improve. All professional musicians I've ever grilled about this answer the same way: maintaining an unjaded love for your music is a life-long challenge. It sucks to turn on the radio and instantly wonder who is playing so you can catalogue them and anything you don't like about their playing in your own mental podium race for BEST, instead of squealing with joy that they are even playing a viola concerto on the air in front of civilians.

I used to love the done-or-not-done quality of dishes and laundry, too, but somehow that has begun to fade.

The best thing about the Olympics, hands down, is that I always have something to hum to the boys. Toby was born during the winter Olympics of '06, Isaac's 4.5 months old now but likes to sleep like a much younger man. So there are anthems, themes, all sorts of snippets of grand tunes floating around even through the clouds of sleep deprivation. I love that main theme- thank you, Mr. Williams, you hummable themey genius you.

DOOOOO DEEEEEEEE Dee DUH! DUH! DUH! DUH! DEEM DEEE Dee DEEE.....

Peepers

Toby's getting glasses. They are made of flexible blue plastic and have unfortunate round rims. When they come in, I'll take pictures of us wrestling him to the ground and applying them directly to his forehead.

I think my gear shifter is broken. Toby loves to play with that kind of thing- he probably got ahold of it at some point and wrenched it clean off. I am no longer able to adjust gracefully between the roles I fill at home and those in the musical world. I'm just kinda tense about both instead. But hey, I can still get around despite my higher mileage and at least I'm paid for.

Organize and simplify

I think Toby has caught the whole Live Simply (tm) Organize (tm) Declutter (tm) fad. He's got the bug. I often come around the corner to find a row of something, like this:
















Or this:
























He has his priorities straight. Keeps his grandparents close and his toys closer, even when running through their sprinkler.


















This is not to say he doesn't let loose every once in a while. I believe his exact words were:
I taked apart a sanwich! I would like another!!























Unfortunately for him, however, it is clear he shares our genes.
He can't hide his freak flag forever.

Going green

There is a tiny little dot exactly between wanting all the area's classical enterprises to have an audition in the fall and wanting them all to just hold their horses a bit longer (a year longer, maybe). I am that dot.

Auditions would motivate me, even though there are only a couple of groups here I truly want to join. I still have to play all the auditions in case I feel like playing or in case I feel like buying shoes.

Last weekend I did a wedding gig here. I had sworn off weddings after I started daydreaming about a car wreck or an irreconcilable fight between the bride and groom preempting the nuptials so I wouldn't have to play Canon one more time. (Strychnine in the guacamole.)

Gig quartets are like a mold, spread subtly across the underpinnings of the western world. You're never more than a mile from one. The gig books alone are some kind of hermaphroditic organism. This wedding I played Saturday included the exact same five songs at the exact same moments in the exact same kind of ceremony I have played on the opposite side of the states. They all have these sad feed-lot cow pieces in their books; most even have the same horrible arrangements.

Molds reproduce using spores. I suppose those could be the few self-arranged tunes a group pulls out when the reception has gotten too loud for anybody to hear anyway. Led Zepplin maybe, or the Beatles. Lots of groups keep a second binder of actual real legitimate quartet works: late Mozarts, early Beethovens and the occasional Piazzola. These are usually the things the quartet really wants to play, the things that keep them from "accidentally" driving over nails on their way to the outdoor wedding on a hot day. These give us hope that we'll be able to use some of our artistry in addition to our coping skills and keep us from all spontaneously taking up something lucrative. Like becoming a Hummer salesperson.

It's hard to get connected to musicians when you haven't joined any group full time. Most are running around, drumming up work or working every chance they get or practicing for work or looking for friends from work on facebook. You know the drill. So that made it comforting, somehow, to tuck into my very own Violin III part on Canon, to emote shamelessly through Bach's Air (not on my G-String) and come out the other end with a nice check to put toward diapers.

I was happy to be part of something even if it has the musty smell of sameness.
World Wide Wedding Quartet (n):
multiple, genetically identical nuclei and is considered a single organism, referred to as a colony. Spreading soon to a ceremony near you.

WFMW- Labels make me happy

This post is part of Shannon's Works For Me Wednesday Series.

I have fallen in love with my labeler. It's a cheap little gizmo that smells slightly of the 70's and it makes a satisfying ca-clunk as each letter is made. Also, it can do the following:












1. Nifty looking gifts: wrap the gift in brown shipping wrap or an inside-out grocery bag. At Christmas I taped the seams with colorful and cheap electrician's tape to continue the minimalist look. Make a label with the recipient's name and slap it on there. I like them just like that, but if you add a few frills it will look... frillier.


2. Label your file folders, especially those for daily sorting use. I find myself much more likely to use a file if I like the way it looks and it's clearly marked. I suppose I'm shallow that way. Disregard the crummy focus point of this photo. Thank you.






3. If you like plain jars of hand soap, labeling is nice so visitors don't end up all slimed with lotion by mistake. I am jonesing for a bunch of one-gallon glass canning jars. I will put them on their sides on a shelf in my garage with their contents labeled on the lid: white rice, brown rice, rare gems, wheat germ, etc. It will look neat and my housewife stock will go up 2 tenths of a point at least.






4. The obvious- your name and number can go on stuff you'd rather not lose. iPods, stuff you loan out like books and dvds, it all looks more formal with a strip of brightly colored tape. This here's my car Bible, and I figured I'd better label it for when I take it into churches filled with post-modern emerging church Word stealing-types. For all I know they might take mine and hand it out to somebody on the street, and we can't have that, now can we.

5. Here's the best thing for you muthaz. Use it to label your kid's drink cups! This totally warrants that exclamation because I've run it through the washer like four times and it's still there. When you do want them off, there's no sticky gross mess. And, I think pre-readers can find their own cup more easily when you put their name on with this. Is it because nobody else's mama is nearly so anal? Maybe, but they will have their water and that's all that matters.

Epilogue: You can get carried away, so try to limit your daily labeling to one or two items.

No good very bad day.

I didn't practice.
I don't practice enough lately.
I don't even take my viola if it's just an overnighter anymore.

And everyone was crying at naptime. Everyone.

We had such a good thing going, but then it turns out he isn't having any fun in preschool, and my expensive-ass mixer broke, and Isaac cried so long in the carseat that Toby finally joined in, and my parents are having kind of a tough time, and he wants to learn to use the bathroom but I'm not sure how to teach that yet, and Isaac bites even though he's all gums (gums of steel), and Toby climbs out of his crib six thousand times a day. I have to talk to him like Hitler must have talked to a mosquito buzzing in his ear as he tried to sleep.

I hope he doesn't remember today, but then again what does it matter: there will be more days like this. How do you ask for grace from a toddler?

Firstsss

Our weekend has been unexpectedly busy, an abundance of good things to do.

Toby decided to join in by trying out some firsts.

1. First jello. Lime. I believe he would have liked to eat his weight in it.

2. First time climbing out of his bed at home. He's been in a pack-n-play since birth. It has no slats to climb, and he has not tried this with his bed yet. Once upon a mattress... Do you think this'll keep him in his room?

3. First (coincidental?) successful use of the toilet. We have not started training him, but he asked us if he could sit on the pot and who are we to say no? Maybe he read my blog. I suppose I will be googling all sorts of strange things tonight, things I never anticipated willfully reading.

Here's the dastardly duo plotting parental domination.

Lightning bug

Both these photos are from last year's trip to Wallowa Lake.

Last night we had the best thunder storm. The lightning was striking all around and above us, sometimes almost at the exact moment the bedroom lit up. Through all of this I was shocked that, while J and I lay there awake and drowsily enjoying the show, both boys slept. I won't say "like babies" because that would mean they woke repeatedly and needed help to relax. No, they slept like teenagers.

Storms have always had a special place in my psyche. When I was around 5 we lived on the outskirts of Helena, Montana in a house with a spectacular second story balcony providing a view of the valley and the lights of the city in the distance. It was a pretty vista even on an average day, but what sticks in my mind was that we would all sit on it after dinner and watch the lightning sweep across the scrubbily junipered sage speckled bowl. I loved everything about storms, from the way your chest walls reverberate sympathetically (Shostakovich 5 has tympani parts that do this) to the loamy smell. It always smelled like fresh clean earthworms to me. Wrinkle your nose if you will, I was a rock-overturning child and still appreciate buggy things.

When I was a little older, both Poltergeist and Firestarter made gathering storms seem even more important. The insane weather was one of the few things I enjoyed of my freshman year of college in Texas.

Like escaping for a few hours while somebody else takes the be-diapered reins, something about a storm makes me feel wild oaty. I wish Portland saw more of them.

WFMW- Teriyaki Salmon, Meatballs

This is for a food-themed Works for Me Wednesday. If you've been looking for good dishes with five or fewer ingredients, click on over there and enjoy the links. I'm sure I'll be printing a bunch of new stuff for my kitchen binder tonight.

Here's mine:

1. Teriyaki Salmon
Ingredients:
Salmon fillet (steak would work, too)
Soy Sauce
Mirin*

Line one of those shallow square brownie-type pans with tin foil.
Pour the soy sauce and mirin together at a ratio of about 1:2. So if you pour 1/3 cup of soy sauce, use 2/3 cup of mirin. Put the fish in the prepared dish with the marinade. You want just enough liquid to wet the whole fish and have a nice little pool around it, though while you marinate more's okay. If you have a very big fillet (like one of them Costco half-a-fish fillets), you'll obviously need more.

Let the fish marinate for anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple hours. Pour off most of the liquid and leave just enough juice for that little pool we mentioned. Cover the top with foil, too.

When you're ready, heat your oven to 375 and cook about 15 minutes. Remove the top foil and cook another 5-15 minutes, until the fish flakes when you poke the thickest part with a fork.

OR lightly oil your grill and cook the salmon there. You can even use some oiled foil in the grill if you like- of course, you won't have the little pool here, though.
*Mirin is a sweet Japanese cooking wine available in most grocery stores, but if you don't want to bother (even though it's totally worth having some on hand) I think you could improvise with cooking wine and a few tbsp brown sugar instead.

2. Lunch Party Meatballs
1 Big Bag Italian Style Frozen Meatballs (those Costco suckers work great)
1 Medium (10 oz or so) Jar Grape Jelly
2 Jars 12 ounce Chili Sauce (a ketchup-like substance found in the ketchup aisle)

This recipe is eminently half-able, and as far as I can tell the proportions aren't super critical anyway. I've even heard tales of folks using Ketchup instead of chili sauce and adding a few spices (cayenne? garlic salt? chives? probably.) with some success.

Put all the above in a crock pot. Cook for about 4 hours on low, stirring once or twice. Remember, don't open the pot more than that lest lots of the heat escape.

These are super popular at baby showers, pass-a-dish parties, and the leftovers (if you have any) are good for sandwiches or on rice. Put out some fancy toothpicks and cute napkins and you're good to go.

The Hoods are here!

Toby loves his hoodies. Not the hip shirts with hoods you see on all the young doods and petty criminals, no those I don't like because of the miniscule teeny wee chance he may catch it on something. You've seen The Incredibles?
Remember her rant re: capes? Nnnno hoods. Too dangerous, dahling.

Ennywho, the hoodies I mean are strawberries! Mount Hood STRAWBERRIES!! I can type it loud because he's sleeping, this human who once burst into tears of longing when we drove past a large strawberry billboard. As you can imagine, we don't mind an obsession with healthy and affordable finger fruits but we still regularly spell rather than utter the word "berry" unless we have the goods to represent.

So today we bopped up to the library to pick up some books on hold (one on the creative disciplines and another on creative discipline. It's where we at.) and zipped over to the farmers market across the way. I am using fun verbs because actually we schlumped our sweaty cranky unpleasantly clinging way over there, wilted little pasty white family that we are. It's hotter than Wil Smith's abs here today. I am running the A/C with wanton fiduciary abandon. Whee.

So we picked up the 1/2 flat and tried to hoof it back to the air conditioned marvel of diesel sucking engineering in a manner that would get us there very quickly but would not cause my inner thighs to spontaneously combust. It's like the running-in-the-rain dilemna, but lamer. It's similar to that walk we all do when trying to score the next spot in a line without looking like a pushy jerk: casually, coincidentally, noncommittally swift.

I believe it was worth all the dehydration just to see the look on his red stained gob. I refrained from yelling, No no no, you don't just hork it down! But realized one animated movie reference per day is enough. Besides, they are sooo horkable.

The Crappening

Just shake it off, M. Night. I know you're better than that. I am one of the four viewers who even liked The Village. Heck, I enjoyed Lady in the Water- that was a real movie, I didn't daydream that one, right?

I'm sure you didn't mean to presume I was so stupid you needed to tell me exactly what was going to happen just before it did in your should-have-been-a-short film. Unless that's what you really meant by calling it the Happening?

I was impressed with how much you made me hate Marky Mark, because I have always liked him and his cute little abs. Yes, even back when the bunch was funky. Who knew he could do simpering wuss with so few layers.

Also, if you'd like to preach at me about the environment and mother earth, please make a video lecture instead. I've heard incorporating a scissor lift can lead to some success there. You've got the condescending tone down pat already.

Holy plot, man, that stunk.

This one goes out to the one I love...

Just think, honey, we're almost there.

Back in the day...

I was the worst mom at pre-preschool today.

1. We were late.
2. I forgot his bag with the all-important diaper and cup.
3. His nose apparently ran.
4. Quite a bit.
5. I was the last mom to pick up.

Thankfully he's not embarrassable yet. Soon.

He had only one melt-down today, when I tried to leave his favorite unfoldy pop-uppy car wash toy thingy on the hood of the Jeep as we drove off. I couldn't even figure out what he was pointing at while waling for a second or two. After I retrieved it he kept saying in a soft voice to himself, "of course we won't leave it, Buddy".

I caught myself asking Isaac to put his arms through the carseat straps. One, he doesn't know any of those words or have the neurons to rub together and Two, he wouldn't do it if he could- he hates that thing.

At one time I had a functional brain.

Grumpy

Hummmm hum hum hummmmm.

So mostly around here we consider the "children's music" genre to be something like Siblings Day- (Did you miss it yesterday? Run out and buy some cards and stuff quick!) an artificial thing created to generate revenue for poorly crafted goods, that should be celebrated continually anyway.

I've rambled before about what we like to have on for the kids. But one guilty pleasure is to have Toby crawl into my lap when I'm on the laptop and ask for "the mujeek puhleez". I go to Noggin and we listen to a few annoying tunes.

Am I the only parent in America who doesn't care for Laurie Berkner? She seems sincere enough and all but her songs are cloying and she's out of tune. Moose and Zee, the Noggin mascots, are similarly lacking in musical quality but the music is not quite as over-perkified. I can deal with a couple of their tunes before closing the browser and telling Toby we're all done.

On a side note, I do like Lisa Loeb and wish she'd write and perform more stuff- Noggin should have put her stuff up all over. Apparently she's got a new cd, maybe they will now. I went to school with her talented blue-haired conductor brother, Ben. Nice guy.

Lately they have a new (to me) guy on there, David Weinstone from New York. I dig a couple of his songs and find him to have some redeeming musical value. He plays some nice guitar and sings with enough character & clarity to catch a child's ears (Toby comes running like I've opened a pint of strawberries). What I like most is that he still sounds like he's doing what he wants, and not what he thinks will garner him a larger share of the minivan contingent's credit card debt.

Here's Grumpy, easily one of his catchiest tunes. It's probably his most annoying to most people, I suppose, but I like it.

Happy Father's Day

Father's day was fun.

We used it as an excuse to grill with my parents, which developed into an excuse to make strawberry ice cream and drink Black Butte Porter with my mom. Not that we need an excuse.

We reminisced and I realized yet again that I hope J and I can give our boys even some portion of the fun we had while growing up with our parents. Go ahead, roll your eyes internet. My college friend said we sounded like the Brady Bunch. Looking back I can hear the tinge of longing in her voice, but at the time I felt like it was just one more way in which I was a goody two shoes from a freakishly small town.

The rarity of our intact and more importantly enjoyable families isn't lost on us. Usually. Unless you're talking about me in Junior High, in which case I'll plead the fifth...

Hope you had a good day, too.

Bonding begins with 99 cent die-cast metal.

Toby has taken upon himself the important task of educating Isaac about the deep importance of all things wheeled.


Isaac adores him already, and is very trusting. Plus, he likes the bouncer to bounce.


Toby's favorite pose as big brother.

Well, I never.

It would be nice if, after calling and asking to see our house in 20 minutes, house hunters would at least come inside and have a look. I know it's not their fault that I ran around for 19 minutes tidying, picking up and shoving the boys (one of whom I woke from a nap) into the Jeep. But still, you could pretend you want to see it as I'm driving away instead of sitting in the driveway talking about the next place on your list.

At least the place was in order, if only for that one shining moment.

Do you think free viola lessons for a year with the purchase of our home would be an incentive or disincentive?

Aisaac

I think I went back to gigging a bit too soon.

Don't get me wrong, both the orchestras I've played with this past month have been great. The first was for a conductor I adore who reminds me of a favorite uncle and we did Missa Solemnis with lovely soloists and the only thing I can think to complain of is that the venue was a shmancy catholic church and sounded exactly like a deafening bathroom. My hands would have been protecting my ears if it weren't for the viola they were full of.

Isaac was only a few weeks old at the first rehearsal for that noise, so J brought him to me at the breaks to eat. Let's take a minute and be thankful someone invented this nursing privacy blanket thingy, shall we? I'm working on making myself a couple of knock-offs so I can have one in every bag. If you have a pregnant friend who's planning to boob the kid, get them one of these puppies and I swear she'll remember you in her will.

I also played with the Portland opera, and I am trying to figure out if the woman who sang Aida sold her soul to get her voice or is simply an angel on break from the sparkling gates of heaven. She reminds me of Renee Fleming, whom I might cyber-stalk if I were a socially dysfunctional tecky dude. Amneris kicked it old school, too. I had no idea how much I enjoy Aida- it was almost never a countdown of page turns to the final notes, which really are haunting despite always being described as such by critics.


The conductor, who must be very closely related to Jerry Stiller, was fantastic. I am not kidding- these are four-hour rehearsals and the time skips by. Everyone calling him Gigi made me feel more familiar than we are, like I might bump into him at a streetside cafe in Venice, peer over my huge black sunglasses and offer to buy him a glass of wine while he fawns over my adorably precocious yet incredibly well behaved wonder children.

So why then, in the midst of all the wine and roses, did I wish I weren't working?

Isaac's early weeks were, as everyone warned, entirely different than our memory of Toby's. We joke that he had two moods: asleep and pissed. He has an adorable scowl. Once after I got stuck in old-people traffic exiting the hall's parking garage, J greeted me with a screaming baby and "What HAPPened?" before I could even put down my case. In his defense, there are few circles of hell deeper than The Baby Won't Ever Stop Screaming. Now that Isaac's got a few months under his wee little belt, the learning-a-stick-after-driving-an-automatic phase has mostly passed and we've laid off comparing every single thing he does to rosy memories of his big brother. That, and he has indeed stopped screaming. (mostly)

It surprises me, though, how much just one gig on my schedule made in the feeling of a day or even a week. He probably picked up on my tension. I've probably ruined him something awful by failing to grow my hair seven feet long and wear gingham recreationally, but he was in trouble from the beginning what with a viola being practiced within earshot and such.

In conclusion, if we have another one of these things, I hope I remember to beg off any work for the first three or four months. Even though he was only ever in my hands or his dad's and even though it was nice to get out and smell the Egyptians (Aiiiiida!).

Was that it?

Was that the longest I've gone without posting? I hope so.

So what's up with you, outside world?

In our little compound it's all about placating the insane and caring for the incapacitated. Two and a half is an interesting mental arena. Nine weeks of age can be summed up as a constant state of leakage. I can truly say it keeps me busy.

I'm in the fantastic dreams and daydreams stage of post-partumdom. I hated it last time, and this time it's even peachier. Most nights just as I'm falling asleep a short scene plays doubletime, something like the opening of CSI or House but it horrifically stars either one or both of my boys. I see what's coming usually and can stop it from playing out in my hormone-pickled brain, but still it's no fun. I'll be glad when whatever gland's going off gets itself stabilized.

Whew. Well, I've been asked to come outside and clean up the 'piders. One of life's deepest pleasures has to be having a toddler come take your hand to assist in a task or complete an adventure. Sometimes it's empty webs or flecks of dirt, sometimes there are actual arachnids involved when he mentions his beloved bugs, so I better go see.