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Seattle, part one 2002-01-02 I'm back, and I have so many things to tell that I can't even think where to start. The trips to and from Seattle were long and arduous, fraught with excessive baggage and public toilets. I don't enjoy flying anymore and I'm not sure why. I'm not afraid of being hijacked, because I think any hijackers from here on out will be accosted and beaten by passengers--the days of passenger passivity are long over. What I am afraid of is stuff like mechanical failure and windshear. Francisco, Boy, and I all hold hands on takeoff and landing, because it is our custom, and I noticed I had to concentrate on the hand Boy was holding, to keep it a Happy Hand, a hand laden with carefree insouciance. The hand Francisco was holding was a scared, squeezy hand, gripping more and more tightly with the bumps and turbulence. I feel like when I fly now, every time I fly, I have to come to terms with death, and I wish that weren't the case, because I used to actually enjoy flying. Hopefully someday I will get over being scared, because I want to travel extensively and I can't afford the QE2. We arrived in Seattle at about 3:30 on the 20th, and the trip wasn't too bad. We did not experience delays, and though we got wanded in the airport, the security check didn't take too long. The first leg of the trip, taking us to Newark, was Really turbulent. I don't generally get motion sickness, but I did during that flight. Boy did also, and he almost threw up--I had to whip out a barf bag, following his warning gag. We all three took Dramamine at the Newark airport. And flying into Newark, we saw the Manhattan skyline. This was thrilling because we've never been there, so we'd never seen it in person before. As god is my witness, we Will go there while we still live on the East Coast. The flight from Newark to Seattle was So Long, and it became even longer when the movie was shown. It was Home Alone, and the screen was right in our faces. I hate that movie--it makes me want to pull my skin off and beat Macauley Culkin (Culkin or Caulkin? Let's go with Culkin) with it. Boy watched the movie and enjoyed it, and I tried to not watch it, but because the screen was right there, it was difficult to avoid. I would take my revenge on the Culkin boy, but I think time has already done the job for me. So yeah, we arrived in Seattle, and as I say, the trip wasn't too bad, long flight and Home Alone excepted. My sister in law and her husband (who will be known respectively as L and I from now on) don't live too far from the airport, so we were at their place by 4:00. When we arrived, my mother in law (MIL) was already there, and I was surprised because for some reason it hadn't entered my brain that she would be there. She was there ostensibly to see Francisco, but we soon realized that he was only her excuse to come over and see the baby. I should tell you that Francisco used to be the Golden Child with his mom--he was the son who gave her joy and could do no wrong. Now he is only second best to the grandchild. MIL practically ignored Francisco the whole week, and frankly, he didn't mind. The baby: She is fabulous! I cannot say enough good things about her, so I won't even start. She actually made me think about having a baby, and that it wouldn't be so bad, until I remembered that if Francisco and I had a baby, MIL would undoubtedly move to be near us, and we'd never get rid of her. That realization was a refreshing splash of cold water on the baby idea. I will just love the baby Luci, and any siblings she gets in the future, and that will be enough. MIL was already talking about L and I's next baby, and Luci is only two months old! That woman is rapacious. She is so jealous of Luci; when she wasn't holding her she was right there to distract Luci's attention from the person who Was holding her. She is also jealous of Luci's other grandmother. L will be going back to work in February, and I's mom will watch Luci two days a week, and this plan is giving MIL a prolonged conniption. MIL needs to get a full time job and cannot afford to use two days a week to watch Luci, but she is jealous and I think she might prefer that a stranger watch the baby, just so the other grandmother won't. MIL drives me crazy--can you tell? I'm going to get off this subject now, because it is ugly and doing no good for anyone. Highlights of being in Seattle: **Meeting Luci (duh) **Shopping at Pike Place, Archie McPhee, and other assorted fun stores **Eating hom bao at Mee Sum Pastries (at Pike Place) **Seeing one of my favorite people--my friend, Diana, who unexpectedly treated me to Thai food and also gave me a goodie bag. She made delicious chocolates and jams and cookies, and the chocolates and cookies were very much enjoyed by all--the jams were selfishly hoarded and brought home to NC. I wish I had given Diana more than the magnets and a Bible Quiz Pop I got from Archie McPhee� **Hanging out with L and I. They are really fun people and are easy to be around, and we had a great time. I even think we pretty much all bonded, which is very happy-making. There was some talk of going to Florida with them next Christmas, and I think that would be unbelievably wonderful, but I sort of doubt we'll go through with it. Too many variables to be considered. **Having breakfast once at The Pancake Chef, a restaurant in South Seattle. It is a greasy-spoon type place, but they have the best breakfast menu ever. For REAL. I vacillated between the cheese blintzes and the fritters but eventually decided on the fritters. I got banana fritters and corn fritters, but I should have just gotten banana, because both was too much fritter. They came with a lemon sauce, and my oh my, I am making myself hungry. **Drinking all that good Seattle coffee. Say what you will about Seattle--yeah, it's grey and rainy and cold--but they produce some kickass coffee. And I'm not even talking about Starbucks. **Meeting I's parents, who are wonderful people, and who made us feel right at home. I's mom is particularly warm and friendly, and so is I's grandmother who lives right next door to his parents. I's mom made a healthier version of tamales, which she calls tamelingas (not sure if this is her own recipe or what), and she gave us the recipe and we made them yesterday. They were easy and So yummy. If anyone is interested, I will be glad to share the recipe. I love tamales, but they are loaded with fat, so the tamelingas are right up my alley. So to speak. **Seeing my family in Portland on the 23rd. It was a very enjoyable time and I'm happy we were able to arrange to get together with them. It turned out that my brother was there and Boy was very happy to see him. I was happy to see him also, but I have to say that he gets very infantile when the family is all together. He and Boy were playing and I had to be the mom of them both--this was very annoying and stressful for me, but I am still glad he was there because Boy really loved seeing him. Here are some things I want to mention but are unrelated to each other and so will not flow together in paragraph form. We will, for the nonce, abandon paragraph form altogether, and just keep going with the list format: 1) L and "I" don't have a guest bed, so Francisco and I were sleeping on an air mattress in the extra bedroom. That air mattress nearly killed me. Firstly, it is a double, and because we are used to our king bed, it was like sleeping on a postage stamp. Second, the air in the mattress was cold (it was on a wood floor), and it sucked all my body heat, plus my will to live. The second night was okay, because we had added a mattress pad, but Francisco got up to sleep on the couch and he took the top blanket (a zipped out sleeping bad) with him, and it was at that point that I began suffering. I barely slept either night and by the morning after the second night, I was not well. I got up and put my coat on (their house is cold) and shuffled out to the living room, where "I" greeted me with "Good morning, sailor!" I should mention that my coat is a pea coat. I guess he deduced from my morning coat-wearing that their house is freezing, and they turned up the heat. I also added L's yoga mat to the air mattress and was fine from then on. Francisco continued sleeping on the couch, which was about 1 foot too short for him. I offered to trade him, but he would have none of it. 2) We went to dinner on Xmas Eve with L and "I" (his name begins with I but it's starting to be confusing to call him I without "") and Francisco and L's dad, G, at the Black Angus (mediocre food, fat atmosphere), and some surly man was staring in a hostile way at L, who was breastfeeding Luci. She was being very discreet--a blanket entirely covered the baby and the breast Luci was eating from--but still this man was staring. She told us he was staring so we all turned and looked at him, and he stopped. I guess he thought it was wrong of her to feed the baby in public, but should breastfeeding mothers be shunned and forced to hide when their babies need to eat? Should they be made to feel ashamed of a very natural and healthy thing? I think NOT. Why are there so many ignorant people in the world? 3) When shopping at Pike Place, we happened into a Spanish store--they sold Spanish pottery and paella pans, and Spanish foods, but they also had a small section of books in Spanish. They had a few Dr. Seuss and we bought Luci the Spanish version of Green Eggs and Ham. It is Huevos Verdes con Jamon, and the character in it is not called 'Sam I Am', since that wouldn't rhyme; he is instead called 'Juan Ramon'. "I" is half Peruvian and is fluent in Spanish, and I know they would like Luci to learn Spanish, so the book was well received. 4) On our last night in Seattle, L remembered that she had a lot of boxes in her garage filled with things belonging to L and Francisco's deceased grandmother. L dragged them out and she and Francisco went through them and divided up the things. We managed to fit our stuff (minus some Haviland china that L and "I" are shipping to us, and the Bocci balls they gave us for Xmas, also being shipped) into three boxes to check onto the airplane, and that is where the excessive baggage comes in. Among the things in the Grandma boxes was, for some reason, a small bottle of Goof Off (a paint remover kind of thing), which Francisco packed in one of our three boxes. This turned out to be a bad thing, because the Seattle airport is X-raying all the check-on luggage and they have some kind of bomb-sniffing device that detected the Goof Off. They opened the box and removed it and left a note that said they'd removed it and that the feds could have fined us $2,500 for taking a flammable substance onto the plane, but that they were cutting us some slack, basically. Moral of the story, be careful what you pack, and also, try to fly through the Seattle airport, because it is extremely safe. I have a lot more to say but have no more time to say it today. Stay tuned tomorrow for part two. Can I just say that I missed updating my diary, but more than that I missed reading the diaries of my favorites. I like them all so much, and I loved catching up with them today. Til tomorrow, my wee tamelingas, Love, E
come over some time & see me - 2011-02-25 |
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