Nov
27
November 27, 2006
It snowed like hell last night and at first I was thinking how awesome it would be if it all froze and this morning I’d call into the office, “Oh, I’m so very sorry, but I couldn’t possibly drive in such dangerous conditions!” and then I’d have the whole day to crank up the heat and pad around the house shlorking up cup after cup of coffee, and then I realized that would probably mean Riley’s daycare would be closed, and if that were the case there would be no coffee, only Zuul Elmo.
Thank god, the streets were clear this morning so I could escape the company of my beloved child and go to work where I can drink coffee whenever I want. Things They Don’t Tell You About Parenthood #23958: snow days are no longer vacation.
I’m glad we didn’t stay in Oregon until Sunday because I think we both would have been paranoid about barreling up I-5 in a snowstorm, even though this is Washington, not Michigan, and what I call “snow” some of you would probably call “practically rain” (followed up by, “you goddamned pussy”).
We had a pretty low-stress journey both ways, which was nice. Leaving in the evening was a good move, because Riley fell asleep after a couple hours, and it also offered the unexpected side benefit of me not recognizing any landmarks in the dark and therefore skipping my usual whining about how we’re only in Centraaaaaaaalia, jesus this is taking forever, god I’m so bored (yes, I admit I am perhaps not the perfect traveling companion; on the plus side I always have to pee, so my presence ensures an exhaustive tour of all highway rest areas, which is great if you’re, say, planning a coffee table book [“Skeevy-Looking Feces-Clogged Toilets on America’s Byways: Portraits and Studies” – look for it this holiday season!]).
I’m happy to be back home, I missed our giant comfy bed and our toilet paper which does not disintegrate when you touch it (seriously, can someone explain the existence of 1-ply? Why on earth would you buy it, and don’t even say cost, because isn’t it worth the extra pennies to have some redundancy when it comes to the task, ahem, at hand?) and our highchair which was manufactured in the last twenty years and therefore actually keeps Riley firmly seated rather than allowing him to crawl right over the back of the fucking thing and you know what, I even missed our yowling cat.
I’m also enjoying the temperature of our house, which I would have previously described as “nipple-hardeningly cold” (HELLO GOOGLERS I AM SORRY TO DISAPPOINT), but JB’s parents have somehow morphed into Infirm and Shivering Elders who leave their thermostat cranked to approximately 96 degrees all day long. I spent the whole visit fanning myself and wishing I’d brought less winter-appropriate sweaters and more sleeveless t-shirts. JB gave them shit about it (“What are you, members of the Senate?”) but in return his dad loftily informed us that he’d been colder ever since he lost twenty pounds, so we were forced to shut up and suffer in (fat) silence.
Well, it is doing something outside right now, snowing or sleeting or slushing or something (my coworker told me it’s sleet because the ice particles are conical, he even had an example that he’d collected on a leaf – do any of you work with engineers? Isn’t it an ongoing strange mixture of annoying/charming?), so maybe I’ll get a partial snow afternoon after all. The vacation part can be my drive home.
(Also, because I CANNOT STOP with the parentheticals today: does “partial snow afternoon” sound like some kind of filthy sex term, or is it just me? Partial Snow Afternoon: when the man snausages partially on the girl’s hair, partially on her shoulder.)
(“Snausage” being used in place of a potentially offensive term, of course. I wouldn’t want to gross you out or anything.)
Nov
26
November 26, 2006
We are home, and just in time, because it’s been snowing all freaking evening long and if we had driven back from Oregon today like we had originally planned…oh man. We would be stuck on I-5 so long we’d eventually earn squatter’s rights and own a little chunk of freeway just north of Olympia. That’s after being forced to devour each other to survive, of course.
I posted a bunch of photos from our trip here, but these are my favorites:
Jetty at Bandon beach.
Lurking rocks on the Bandon coastline.
Driftwood with jetty in the background.
Shore Acres park, with some startlingly blue sky that only hung around for a few minutes before turning grey and imposing.
The family at Shore Acres, squinting into the sun.
Poised for turkey, just before our holiday dinner, moments before Riley demanded DOWN OMG LET ME DOWN NOW FOR REAL I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING, etc.
The boy and his tiny throne.
It’s hard to tell here, but at the bottom of the photo is a red spot from a laser pointer, which turned out to be a surprisingly entertaining method of scaring our young child. Muah ha ha ha!
Lastly, the boy wearing a teeny plaid shirt, like the world’s runtiest grunge rocker.
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