Went down to The Market today for lunch
at the The Athenian....R. was in the kitchen,
hustling saute pans amidst the flames of the grill.
A friend of ours, a socio-biologist from U. of Wyoming,
is in town, and there's no better view for an out-of-town
visitor than from the harborside windows of The Athenian.
To our dismay, the Pike Place Market Festival
was happening, which just adds to the crush of crowds
and chaos factor. My feeling is that The Market
is a festival unto itself, every day of the year. So today
was festival upon festival, with flying fish and hazelnuts
and bunches of plump peonies, etc. We picked up a few
Dungeness crab legs for dinner, and I bought three
peaches, for slightly less than the price of gold.

Check out this pizza-oven-on-wheels: brilliant!



I was quite taken by this little man all dressed in white,
wandering around as if the place belonged to him.
At one point, I saw him walk right behind the counter
at one of the fish vendors, and he pulled on a black
piece of hosing. Maybe he belonged, but no one even seemed
to notice his presence. He was probably five feet tall,
and everything about him was most unpigmented!



This is a detail from a larger photo I took
of a bank of windows. I'm quite taken with reflections,
and the universes they contain. In fact, I didn't even
see this guy (and his mouthful) until I uploaded
the photo to my computer, so I cropped him into focus:



***

Later, we stopped at the Brandon Street house
to check in on the boys, and the level of anxiety
is still running extremely high. In spite of this,
or maybe, to spite this, I picked a bunch of pink roses,
and carried them home to Redmond in the car
on my lap, the thorns prickling me with every breath.
The scent was apples & lemons....

And now for something completely different.....

A little after midnight last night the cats woke me
with their traipsing about the bedroom: leaping,
crinkling paper. P. asked me what it was all about,
and I said, "Oh, they're just playing."

Then I got up to use the bathroom, and a dark shape
swooped down from the ceiling, swooped away,
swooped towards me again. Yikes! Bat!
The bathroom (batroom) window doesn't have
a screen: point of entry. I'm not bat-phobic,
but it was a little unnerving to be sitting
on la toilette with a bat careening about my head.

I left fierce Sally with the bat, closed the batroom door,
and after about five minutes, Sally called me -- not
a wail to open the door and let her out, but more
a "come and see" kind of meow.

Sure enough, she had captured and disabled
the critter, and was standing guard over it
waiting for my approval. She then proceeded
to flip it all over the batroom, rolling and luxuriating
in her furred toy. Marble Cake, less brazen, came in
to sniff at it, gave it a tentative pat with her paw,
then left it to Miss Sally.

This morning, I scooped the feather-weight chiroptera
out the window, but took a good look at its
tiny ears, its wings carefully folded against the body.
I considered photographing it for this post,
but thought batter of it. A bit too Halloweenish,
perhaps. And disrespectful to the bat.

(And yes, I looked up all kinds of information
about bats & rabies, including the exhaustive
CDC site, and it appears very unlikely that this
is a concern. And the cats immunizations are current.)

Again, quiet. A desire for hibernation.

***

There are numerous stages to dealing with a crime,
and just when you think you're possibly beginning
to move on with things, Stage #-- shows its face.

I'm in the Homeowner's Insurance Stage at the moment.
In need of receipts (!) for everything stolen, or photographs
proving that I or my sons did indeed possess "X".
No receipt for my late-husband's Seiko watch,
purchased in, oh, 1980, which I recently had refurbished
to give to R. for his college graduation. (And that's just
an example of things for which receipts no longer exist.)
No monetary value attached to the spoon collection
that my mom gave N. before she passed away. And heavens,
no receipt! Silly spoons from places like Sturbridge Village
and Zermatt and Oahu, collected over many years.
Silly even to N., but a treasure nonetheless.
Signed baseballs. Sigh. Stuff. Again, it's all just stuff.

***

And there is good new, always: R. started a new job
yesterday, at The Athenian Inn, a 100-year-old establishment
in the Pike Place Market. His first task was assisting in
the food prep for the 90th birthday party for the owner.
He's delighted to be working again, and even better:
they offer benefits after 90 days. It's a fresh start
on a new day at a new place. His black eye will fade,
the swelling on his forehead will diminish,
the abrasions will soon show little scarring.
Gratitude, for being safe.
For being alive.

Quiet. Calm.

***

Of course, more appropriately, I'd write
FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK,
with the satisfaction of the fricative F
and the bite-and-spit of the CK.
But let's get back to:

Quiet. Calm.

Much better.

Remember....

It's Memorial Day, and this is what I will remember:

1. At around 6am today, three men forced entry
into my Brandon Street house with a crow bar,
splintering the front door and popping the dead bolt.

2. My oldest son was bound, gagged and blindfolded;
they said that the object they held at the back of his head
was a gun.

3. House was ransacked: every drawer emptied out,
pawed through.

4. Pillows slashed open, mattresses turned, carpet
pulled up in corners, sofa's upended, crawl space! opened
with a screw driver -- they scooted around in there
on a sheet, so as not to let the insulation touch them.

5. R., in attempt to get help, stumbled with
his legs and arms bound, fell, got pretty banged up
in the head.

6. Gone: computers, cameras, cell phones, wallets,
passports, watches (including one which belonged
to my late husband which I had refurbished to give
to R. for college graduation next month); and then
some very odd things: my dad's glasses from many
decades ago, signed baseballs, a spoon collection
that my mom gave N. -- no value except sentimental.
R.'s leather jacket that I got for him in Paris,
an autographed Kurt Vonnegut limited edited
edition boxed set.

7. My friend Tom-the-Prince replaced 4 locks, got me
some breakfast, and, with his wife Carol, opened their
home to us. They are the best friends anyone could
ever have. I love them.

8. My sister K. and friend C. helped me sort and clean:
pile upon pile of stuff. Heaping piles of stuff.
Upended, rummaged, violated stuff.

9. Citizen K., also a prince, brought R. to his job interview
at noon. R. with his black eye and contused forehead
and bandages.

10. Locksmith, 1-800-banks, pharmacies.
Police-cars in multiples. Detectives.
Neighbors.

11. And the cats: what have they to lose?
A soft blanket? Kibble? A warm body
against which to snuggle?

12. Vulnerability.

13. At some point, we'll all succumb to the ravages
of human limitations, and everything, everything
we leave behind will just be stuff.

14. Sometimes life is just fucked up.

Book Talk

I'm reading Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires,
and came across a passage where she describes
going into a "dim little French restaurant"
in Manhattan in the 1950's, where her parents
ate two and three times a week:

But what I like even better were the times
Max took me into the private dining room
where the waiters went to smoke. We'd sit
in that tangle of extra chairs and scarred
wooden tables as he and Bruno and Jacques
traded stories, reaching back farther and
farther into their memories.

The best stories always began "When my father
was a waiter..." Hearing that, Bruno would light
a cigarette, Jacques would sip his wine, and I
would cross my legs beneath me and hold my breath."

I'm not even halfway through the book, but
I'm enchanted as Ms. Reichl -- food critic
for the New York Times -- dons disguise after disguise
as she eats her way through the city. In the midst
of the passage quoted above, I was suddenly seized
with the desire to read this aloud to my
23-year-old son, who graduates with his Culinary
Certificate next month. Somehow, I don't think
that this idea would tickle him even half as much
as it does me, and of course I don't intend to
propose it! But the notion of it has summoned up
all sorts of memories of reading aloud to my sons
when they were children.



I believe that maybe I enjoyed it more than they did,
or at least as much. We ploughed through all of
L. Frank Baum's Oz books -- 15+. We devoured
Laura Ingalls Wilder, C.S. Lewis, Betty MacDonald,
Will Hobbs, The Hobbit, The Indian in the Cupboard series,
The Borrowers. Many years of books read every night
for an hour or more, many whose titles I've
forgotten. And one of the best parts, besides
the obvious delight on the part of my boys,
was that I read books I'd somehow missed when
I was a child.




I'll admit that Harry Potter did me in. As popular
as this series is, it just doesn't match up
to the list of books above, at least in the
Reading Aloud Department. HP fails what I like
to refer to as The Saliva Test:
If you pick up any of the books in my list above
and begin to read out loud, you will find
that the words flow along in a smooth
and fluid manner. In a poorly-composed book,
excess saliva will accumulate in your mouth,
usually around the front teeth. This is a very
uncomfortable sensation, and usually results in
unplanned spitting at whichever unfortunate child
is sitting in spitting range. This happened often
when I read the first book in the HP series.
Generally clumsy and stilted (and I expect
barbs to be thrown at me for this), after
sputtering my way all the way to the conclusion,
I proclaimed that I was finished not only
with the HP books, but with reading aloud
as well. (The boys were probably 11 and 13
but still loved our evening ritual.)

I was ready for a change. I'd done my duty,
and then some! For a few months after, each
night I could hear them reading to each other
as they completed the second and third books
in the series. And then even that tapered off.
R. moved into his own space in the basement,
N. reveled in taking ownership
of the formerly-shared bedroom.

I like to think that they grew up book-by-book,
under the tutelage of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle,
Ma Ingalls, Jack Pumpkinhead, Aslin and Bilbo Baggins.
(And, well, uh, me, their mom.)

This just in:

A customer of ours who may relate to you (perhaps)
in Singapore died three years ago in Tsunami tragedy
in Indonesia leaving behind an estate/capital
(US$42.9M with interest) in a bank here where I work,
till date nobody has come forward or put application
for the claim.

I urge you to come forward since I can provide you
with the details needed for you to claim
the estate/capital so that I can be gratify by you,
in this way $17,160,000.00 for you and
$25,740,000.00 for me and my colleagues
that will do all the crucial part in the bank
to have the claim release to you promptly.

--Cheng Koh, Singapore.

I'll get right on that.
(I especially like that he/she tries to lure me
by offering me less money than his/her commission.)

Oh, how the clock does tick, and life just
barrels forward...

(Apologies to N. for the following):
My youngest son, not even twenty-one years old,
has begun to lose his hair. I guess it's the bad
luck of the gene pool here: both grandfathers,
as well as his father, "suffered" from this same
dwindling of the hirsute cranial population.
But isn't this something that happens
to (apologies) old men? Something that happens
when a boy can at least legally belly up to the bar?
Something that happens to a man
whose mother is older than me?

I know, I know. It's not all about me.
But yesterday, when I first officially
noticed this, I couldn't help but feel
an inexorable surging forward
in the global timeclock, a leap
into a future that I try to keep
a hand against, willing it to stay
in front of me a step or two,
instead of staring me in the eye.

Alas. Tick tock.

Anecdotal Crow (with Butterfly)

(photo, Janis Ringuette)


My big black cat had brought a fledgling crow
into my bedroom early one morning, all panic
(on the crow's part) and pride (not me!).
Cats insert their fangs into a potential meal
just enough to disable them, so that there still
remains some flapability in the bird, some
feline entertainment. But I was to have none
of that: I quickly removed the baby crow
from the much dismayed Tip, and, being
somewhat of a mother-bird myself, fixed up
a box with fresh grasses, where I placed
the injured bird. Silly, I know.
My boys were perhaps 7 and 9, and they
hovered nearly as much as I did. Our little crow
occasionally squawked, bewildered.
Later on, after dinner, I placed the box on the
flat roof of my garage, and until darkness fell,
an adult crow stood sentry, pacing back and forth
along the roof-edge. Of course, by morning,
the baby was dead.

The next winter, I was up early on a Sunday morning,
enjoying the quiet with the newspaper and coffee.
Then I heard an irregular tick tick coming from
the front of the house. I stopped and listened; it stopped
and then started again. Something was hitting
my front windows: was there someone on the sidewalk
tossing bits of gravel at my house?
When I went to the front door (a big old-fashioned
door that was mostly glass), I saw my big old black
cat Tip leaning against the door as if he could make
it open if only he could press hard enough. What the --?
And then I heard it again, tick. And I saw a fir cone
bounce off the window: up in the Douglas fir
was a crow, picking cones with his/her beak, and
lobbing them at my cat.

Of course, I was amazed. Did this crow remember
that this cat murdered it's baby? Possibly. Likely.
Crows are known to "use" objects.
Crows are crafty, and wily.

When I opened the door, Tip varoomed into the house,
safe at last. And after that, I noticed that the local
crows dive-bombed him whenever he was outside.

Old Tip's hunting days are now long over. He went
through a phase of hunting Western Tiger Swallowtail
butterflies -- an odd sight, as he'd grasp his prey right
in the center, so that the wings fanned out on either side
of his mouth. Against the black fur it was a startling sight.

Eye to Iris

From Melinda's garden....

Not Your Typical Book Group

Apparently this is what happens
when a group of women get together to discuss
Madame Bovary and feast on rack of lamb:



(Maybe I oughta come clean and admit
that this is what I do when I get together
with friends to discuss Madame Bovary
and feast on rack of lamb.)

On a rare sunny Ireland day last June, Paul and I
drove up to the Mullet Peninsula in the far northwest
of County Mayo. It's a remote and windy place:
the largest town, on what feels more like an island
than a peninsula, is Belmullet, population 2,000.
The rest of the peninsula is even more sparsely
populated, so we truly had the day --
and the landscape -- to ourselves.

My favorite thing to do in Ireland is to explore,
and for hours we drove down narrow lanes
that ended in the sea,


or ended nowhere, but offered spectacular vistas,
such as this of the north side of Achill Island --


Amid the constant wind we wandered, got lost,
found our way again, got lost again.
I'm constantly on the lookout for holy wells,
and there always seems to be one --



Later that evening, we had tickets to see
the Scottish singer/songwriter Dick Gaughan,
at the new performing arts center in Belmullet.
(I would venture to say that in the "crowd"
of fifty-or-so, we were most likely the only Americans.)
I'm going to use a word here for which I am often
teased by my spouse, but it's a word which
sums up the performance: magical.

(And I think he'll forgive this linguistic transgression
when I state the reason for this post, which is
to point you to a recent entry in his Just A Song blog,
where he discusses Gaughan's rendition of Now Westlin Winds.)

Back to Belmullet: the solstice was nigh,
and as we left the concert, close to 11pm, the last
of the sun sent up its waning light on the Atlantic
horizon. We drove an hour, home to Carrowholly,
our solitary car illuminating the bogs, two Americans
elated at our good fortune in being alive, together,
on such a glorious day.

The jays are out with their fledgling:
flying lessons. All-a-kerfuffle on account
of the two cats, the lazy cats,
the limp-Sunday-afternoon cats
with their diffidence, who in turn are alarmed
by the jays' incessant cratch cratch cratch.
I keep trying to snap a photo of the youngster
who teeters on photinia twigs, obscured
by crimson leaves. No luck.
And no danger here with these middle-aged
maiden felines.

***

The other day I caught myself saying
where in heck is....
and I thought,
no one ever says go to heck!
But the Irish say, feck-it,
and once while driving in Ireland
there was a boy hitchhiking
with a t-shirt that said FCEK.
In a fit of anger, I could say,
Go feck yourself! And while you're at it, go to heck!
But I probably won't.

***

As accompaniment to the Stellar's jays,
the duet of Bebo and Chucho Valdez
on piano. A glass of chenin blanc.
A roast in the oven (fresh thyme, garlic,
bay leaves, marjoram). Butter lettuce
and radicchio in a bowl, walnuts to roast,
gorgonzola vinaigrette to whirl in the blender.
This is life and this is good.

This comes from my niece Nicole,
who is doing graduate work on the influenza
virus, at the University of Ottawa:

From my Zen Calendar:

Under the leaves
Of a morning glory:
Cat's eyes.

--Natsume Soseki

Yes, it's nice to be able to discover
something worth writing poetry about
in the morning glory (aka bindweed), but all I can consider
is its insidious nature, and how, if I don't
get over to Brandon Street NOW
and rip and rip and rip it out,
it will overtake not only the yard
but the house as well.

Pet Names, Redux

I spent an inordinate amount of time this morning
alphabetizing all the pet names I received from my
pet-names post. Not entirely sure why I did this;
perhaps it's a longing for 5th grade language arts.
Or maybe it's just an O.C. thing. Anyway.
I've just completed my completely non-scientific
analysis, and here are my results:

Number of human names given to pets: 57.
What does this mean? Do we yearn for
(more) children?

Number of names ending in "y", "i", "ie": 32.
We love those cutesy-ootsey names,
don't we?

Number of hyphenated names: 8.
Hmmm.

Number of pets named after famous persons: 7.
(We do aggrandize these critters.)

Number of pet names that are nouns: 26.
Number of pet names that are adjectives: 7.
Number of pet names that are verbs: 7.
Number of pet names that are exclamations: 1.
("Boo"! --who took her own life at the age of
22 or 23 by throwing herself under the wheels
of a car.)
Fun with parts of speech!

Number of generic pet names: 2 --
Blackcat, Greycat.

Most original names:
Ethyl, so-named after being found at a gas station;
Prader, named after an eating disorder;
tiny-o the tiny terrorist (I don't know why).

Most unusual source of a name:
Ruby Reilly, named for the subject of pornographic letters
found under the floorboards of a house.

There were 2 Alices, 2 Georges, 3 Molly's,
3 Tiggers.

And, finally, most poetic pet name:
"We let my little brother name our black and white
kitten. He said she looked just like Melting Snow on Rocks,
and that’s what he named her." --

Thanks to all who contributed to this list!
Blogging is fun!

Alex
Alice
Alice (aka Deedles, Dee, The Dee Kitten)
Baby-Girl
Bantu
Baxter
Beethoven
Bill
BillyJoeBobDon
Blackcat
Bobbi-Jean
Bogo
boo
bright eyes
Brother Love
Bucket
Charlie
Charlotte
chase
Ching (as in I Ching)
Claire
Clyde
Cracklin’ Rosie
Danke
Dinah
Dixie
Ethyl (who was found at a gas station)
Elvis
Fanny
Fergie-the-Tripod
Flip (aka Flink)
Fluffy
Freda
George
George
Glynnis
Grey Cat
Hickety (for here, kitty)
Jack
Jennifer
Jersey
Jessie
Johnny
Johnson and Evinrude
Junior
Kiwi
Kotter
Leo
Lilli
little bit
Loose fur
Lucille
Lucy
Madeline
Marble Cake
Marta
Max Headroom
M.E (for mouse eater)
Melting Snow on Rocks
Mickey Mouse
mimi
Ming
miss kitty
Molly
Molly
Molly Flopover
Muffin
Nim
Oona-Balloona
Pan
Pandora
Pantages
Paris the Genius Cat
Party
Paw Boy
pepper
pheobe marie euphegenia
Phloem
Pickle
Pinky
Pooh-doh
Pookie-Ratt
Porter
Prader (named for the disease, Prader-Willy, that requires
a lock on the fridge for uncontrolled eating, as the cat did)
prick
Princess Cleo
Puddin
Puppy (a kitten)
Rachel
Rajicat
Ratsky
Ricky (his sister was Lucy)
RingChing
Rita
Rothko
Ruby Reilly
Sally
Sarah
Shadow
Sheba
Shilo
slake
Smokey
Snoochie
Sophie
Spike
SueSue
Sweet Caroline
tails
Tammany
The Evil Orlando
Tigger
Tigger
Tigger-Lou
Ting
tiny-o the tiny terrorist
Tiny Tim
Tip (aka Notorious T.I.P., Tip O’Neill, They Call Me Mistuh Tip)
Tom Kitten
TomTom
toes
Twitchy
tux
uffer
Vicki
Wildman ("because he was")
Winkle
Winnie
Xylophone (aka Xylene)
Wishabelle
zena sarafina
Zora

For all Seattle-area readers, my son has asked me
to post this survey (it's part of his technical writing class).
He'd appreciate it if you took a few moments
to complete it. Click here.

Thanks!

Confession time....

I have given-in to the latest e-communication: twitter.
I'm not sure why, except that I love to spy on people.
I don't mean literally. I don't lurk around with binoculars.
But I do love to lurk on-line.
Hee hee.

Twitter me: @EireT7

Mom

In the early 1940's:


and in 1960, with five daughters:

The last daughter was born the following May.
Not pictured is my brother, away at school.
I don't know what the occasion was, but as it appears
to be late summer, it's most likely a post-mass
Sunday afternoon.

Not long before she passed away, in 2002, she asked me
what I wanted from her few remaining possessions.
I told her that the only thing I wanted was her biscuit cutter:



Coming from a big family, there were always surrogate moms
on the scene, most notably my sister Ann. I think the story
is that when I was born, Mom handed me to Ann (who was,
I think, 8 years old), and said "Here! She's yours!"
(Or something close to that.)
So much responsibility for someone so young.

Sacred

I've decided to revisit a post from earlier in the week
about the twin-suicides of two dear friends a few years
ago. My friend Linda Ana posted this comment:

I am grateful to Mary's brother Mark for allowing friends
and neighbors to cope with the tremendous loss
before the structurally-challenged home of our dear ones
is sold, demolished, replaced with a generic 3-story townhouse.

This afternoon Reilly and I walked down to Pat and Mary's
house, and I took a few photos. Peering in the windows,
it felt a little like we were violating a sacred space:
everything seemed to be as it was at the time
of Mary's death. Here's a view looking in the kitchen:



It was eerie, yet comforting at the same time.
Here's another view, of the kitchen bay window:



Outside was a reliquary of weather-worn treasures;
I was reminded of the holy wells of Ireland, where devotees
leave a memento/offering to the saint the well honors.
All that's missing in Pat & Mary's yard is a little running water
from a sacred source. Perhaps it's there, maybe I didn't
look closely enough. Or perhaps it's just underfoot,
a secret grotto, a cavern.

Maybe it lies beneath these purple sequins....




The gargoyles give no clues....


The birdhouses/feeders are all empty, and the ribbons
supporting this one (roofed with a license plate)
are long-faded:



Altars abounded, of varying inspirations:




This one, to the Goddess of Dairy,
was missing a plant in the clay pot,
although the tulip tree has left pink offerings....


Painted stones,



painted antelope skull,



...and chimes that sound for no one
but el sol.


A few more icons:





And a perpetually-slumbering beast:



There is a lifetime of images here --
my children grew up with the love and friendship
of Pat & Mary, and although their departure is still
sharp-edged, they are very much alive
in memory, and in artifact.

After Pat's memorial, my boys and I came home
and stripped all the rose petals from our five bushes,
gathered them in silver bowls, and carried them
down the street, where we strewed them in a path
from the street to Mary's door: coral, cheek-pink,
artery-red.

I'll leave you with this last photo, a few lines
tacked to the siding on Pat & Mary's house:

Fun with H1N1

What do you call a vegetarian influenza virus?
The to-flu.

What do you call a vegetarian influenza virus
that affects only the feet?
The toe-flu.

(I've made a decision to torture not only my co-workers
and family members with my pun-jokes, but my
blog readers as well. And no apologies!)

Crazy busy at work lately, galleries calling
looking for their orders, sandblaster problems,
my hands ache from painting, peeling, polishing....
There is a point in the process where the piece
tends to look really messy, with paint smudged
and smeared, colors colliding: stem, leaf & petal
a jumble of black, green, pink/red/yellow.
And then something wonderful happens, with
a damp cloth and a soft emery board, and the pattern
emerges -- delicate, clear, precise.
That's the "ahhhh" moment.
(And then it's the ibuprofen moment. Sigh.)

What odd names have your given your pets?
Here are some of mine:

-George

-Molly

-Alex

-Alice (aka Deedles, Dee, The Dee Kitten)

-Sarah

-Tom Kitten

-Sally MacLennane
(While these are not odd names in and of themselves,
I find it odd when we give animals human names.)

-Phloem (the part of a vascular bundle consisting of
sieve tubes, companion cells, parenchyma, and fibers
forming the food-conducting tissue of a plant.)

-Xylophone (aka Xylene)

-Tip (aka Notorious T.I.P., Tip O'Neill,
They Call Me Mistuh Tip)

-Flip (aka Flink)

-Marble Cake

I'd love to hear more pet names
from whoever wishes to contribute!

Peonies

Peony tulips -- those pictured in my blog header,
bring to mind my departed friend and neighbor,
Mary H., whose shattered heart upon the suicide
of her terminally-ill partner caused her to follow
suit six months later. She was a terrific gardener --
she searched out unusual varieties of flowers
and tomatoes and grew them in her tiny yard
and her parking-strip garden. She was generous
to a fault: one May afternoon, as I was walking by
and commented on the unusual nature of her
peony tulips, she cut nearly all of them and handed
to me a most glorious bouquet.

Mary was quiet about her life prior to the one we witnessed
on South Brandon Street. Her brilliance and vocabulary
were unmatched: I was humbled in her presence. Mary
devoted much of the twenty years I knew her to her partner,
Pat, who suffered from a debilitating lung disease. Pat
was a gem unto herself: one December, when we were
struggling to find cash for gifts for the boys, she left
$250 in an envelope on our porch. Pat was a favorite
among the neighborhood children: her many tattoos
fascinated, as did her mohawked hair. She deemed herself
"The Present Wizard", and would periodically make a run
to a toy store and return laden with the latest Ninja Turtle
or super-soaker.

And all this from a bucket of peony tulips at The Market.
Mary H., you are missed. And Pat: you too.

An indulgence of tulips yesterday at Pike Place Market --
my niece Jane and I dawdled and took pictures
while the boys patiently lagged behind with us.
They'd seen one, seen 'em all, while we girls
couldn't seem to get enough. I was in a tulip swoon
for hours....

A (very) short video of Coal Creek Falls
from our walk (hike) yesterday at
Cougar Mountain Regional Wildlife Park.
For more photos, click here.
The day was nearly balmy; a warm breeze
rustled the painfully-new green of alders
and vine maples. I grew up almost in the back yard
of this park, and walking through these ravines
and ferny glens is as close to a sacramental experience
as I'm likely to get these days.
I'd like to climb a tree and perch awhile
among the chattering finches.
And just be silent.

There's a great post today over at
the "blog" of "unnecessary" question marks.

Paul's niece (12) and nephew (14) are flying in
from Fort Worth this morning. Their schools
have been cancelled due to the Pig Panic, and their
mom works for an airline, so they are taking advantage
of the flight benefits. They've been feeling pretty
bored and cooped up this past week. I am really
looking forward to having some kids in the house!
(As well as getting to know my new niece and nephew
a lot better.) We're thinking: Space Needle (de rigueur),
The Museum of Flight, Pike Place Market, perhaps
a ferry ride out to Bainbridge.

There's a chocolate cake rising in the oven, the beds
are freshly made. I'm going shopping for "fruit roll-ups"
and "Life" cereal. What else? Peanut butter? Potato chips?

Ug. Just finished cleaning the fridge.
I don't know why I was saving all those science projects.
The kids aren't in grade five anymore. I tossed
some dessicated ginger that was most testicular.
Does saurkraut last indefinitely? I tossed that too.
Some cheeses decided to have a mold-fest, or they
were conducting penicillin research. Au revoir, mes amis.
Bacon fat? Saved. (Even just a teaspoon can add
a blossom of flavor to a dish with minimal coronary
lipid expansion.) Guinness? Is there a question?
Catnip? Saved. (I store this in the fridge or the cats
will open cupboards and drawers when they feel
like getting stoned.) Prosecco? Again, is there a question?
(Everyone should keep a bottle of bubbly in their fridge.
You just never know when you'll need it.) Some
mushrooms greatly resembling the ginger: ta-ta.

And I've just discovered that I can compost/recycle
all my food waste here in lovely Redmond. I reduced
the garbage can size to 20 gallons. Going green!