Jun
3
June 3, 2007
What a crackerjack of a weekend it’s been. JB’s parents came to visit Riley (who acted disgustingly angelic all weekend and prompted many comments from JB’s mom along the lines of, “He just falls asleep without a peep! And he’s such a good eater!” “He really knows how to keep himself occupied, doesn’t he? So independent!” and “Oh, he’s just such a sweet boy”; she’s probably been reading all my kvetching entries on ClubMom and wondering just what kind of intolerant jackass I am, for there is no way this giggling, halo-clad cherub could be the same petite monstre who supposedly pitches nuclear-level tantrums on a regular basis and once bit his mother hard enough to leave a massive bruise for two weeks [so basically my child is like a buggy computer that magically fixes itself when a sysadmin is nearby, if computer = mercurial befanged toddler and sysadmin = doting grandparents]) and their company was like taking a mini vacation in our own home. They got the boy up in the morning, played with him all day long, and were tireless participants in All Things Riley, including walking him down the street several times a day so he could exclaim over the letter E on the sewer grate for the millionth time (“EE! EEEEEE!”).
Best of all, they were more than happy to take evening watch and allow JB and I to have a couple of date nights. (You know: date nights, where you leave the house and kids in order to talk about the house and kids in a different environment. Ho ho, and they say parents are boring!)
I managed to convince JB that we should see that movie involving fast-moving artery-chomping zombielike humans on Friday, and I’m pleased to report that it was mostly successful on all fronts. There were scenes that required careful deliberate eye-blurring (I cross my eyes slightly in the scary parts of movies, so as to achieve the peeking-through-the-fingers effect without looking like a pussy) and there was a commendable amount of character kill-off and I loved the depressing post-outbreak military presence. My coworker said 28 Weeks Later is to 28 Days Later as Aliens is to Alien, and while I gave him shit at the time (because dude: fuckin Aliens. You know, “Game over, man! Game over!”? Movies just don’t GET any better than Aliens) the comparison is actually not completely insane.
I’d discuss the one extremely silly aspect of 28 Weeks Later, but blah blah spoilers. Let me just say a certain suspension of belief—beyond the whole ‘there’s a crazy virus that makes people act like zombies on speedballs’ storyline—is necessary.
So we did that on Friday night, and on Saturday JB and I went back to the Dahlia Lounge for a long, expensive, exceedingly fattening dinner. I had the doughnuts, the just-cooked mini donuts with thick whipped cream and fresh jam, for dessert, and all I can say about that is mmmmmmmmmmmm, ohhhhhh, oh, oh, OH! OHHhhhh. Mmm. Mn.
The weather has been outstanding, sunny and summery, and we’ve spent a lot of time sitting in the backyard while Riley graffiti-tags everything with chalk and splashes around in his plastic pool (“AH WET!”). I even managed to get in a pre-donut run on Saturday and added to my growing mishmash of weird tan lines.
The solitary fly in our ointment-rich weekend was this afternoon when I insisted upon visiting the dog park. We hadn’t been in a long, long time and I figured Riley would love seeing all the dogs and having the chance to run around while Dog went swimming; well, I was partially right. He liked the dogs, but he went beserko-batshit over the balls people were throwing for their dogs. “BALL! A BALL A BALL A BALL!” He’d see a wet tennis ball go flying by and he’d start flipping out because he couldn’t have it. Also, he wasn’t content to stand on the sidelines of the water, he wanted to plunge right in, never mind that it was a roiling muddy mess of dogs and way the hell over his head.
So we’d drag him away from a water access area and he’d be shrieking and flailing and generally experiencing a total toddler system malfunction (note that the grandparents had departed by this time and so missed the chance to observe this behavior, OF COURSE) to the point where half of the park was giving us those half-sympathetic, half-relieved-it-isn’t-them glances. We tried our best—even finding him a semi chewed ball of his own, which he promptly flung into the gaping maw of a passing border collie—but finally left in sweaty surrender, leaving a trail of tears and snot.
It’ll be a cold day in hell before I get JB to return to the dog park (I’m pretty sure he now thinks of it as his personal Waterloo) and god knows I’m not going to try and herd both toddler and Lab by myself, so I guess Marymoor won’t be highly featured on our summer agenda this year. Sorry, Dog. Is there any way we can help you exact your revenge on the boy for this unjust situation?
Oh, okay. Yeah, that works.
PS: here’s our best attempt at a family portrait, taken this weekend:
Child: belly showing? Clutching a toy as if buzzards were circling? Wearing pants that haven’t fit in weeks? Deeply suspicious? Check, check, check, and CHECK.
May
31
May 31, 2007
It was nearly 90 degrees in the Seattle area yesterday, and of course the evening news had a Dire Segment about how if it’s this hot in May, what can it mean for the rest of the summer? As though it’s going to stay consistently hot from here on out, as if it wasn’t rainy and chilly four days ago. I just don’t think a Pacific Northwesterner can be happy unless they’re bitching about the weather.
Riley and I were at our Wednesday playdate in the afternoon and despite multiple slatherings of SPF 714820 I managed to burn my shoulders. Just the tops of my shoulders. Not the rest of my arms. A couple weeks ago, I got a sunburn on the parts of my arms not covered by a t-shirt—you know, the farmer tan look?—so now I have this bizarre strip of whitish, unexposed skin between my reddish shoulders and my somewhat tanned arms. I’m telling myself that it looks tribal, rather than dorky. “Oh, that?” I plan to say, should anyone ask whether or not I’m suffering from an exotic skin-discoloration disease, “I’m, like, totally into body modification.”
Ashley took a picture of Riley yesterday which I feel captures the more challenging side of his personality quite nicely:
It looks quite a bit like the photo at the top of this blog, doesn’t it? That’s because he is ALWAYS TALKING IN ALL CAPS.
Also, when I compare Riley to a howler monkey, you probably think I’m kidding around (just like when I say I’m going to stuff him in a wood chipper, which is, ha ha, obviously not serious at all) (except on days of the week ending in Y). However, BEHOLD:
Eerie, is it not? Ah, mein pint-sized simian Fuhrer.
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