Make a tiny garden with your tiny tot!

I've been trying to come up with activities that will get the kids outside and keep them occupied. This idea is super easy, fun, and really not very expensive.  You can create an adorable garden that your child can nurture all Summer for less than $20.

He picked a nice pinwheel to finish the decoration.

First we picked up a fence at Home Depot.  Then I let the boy pick whatever color of spray paint he wanted and we decorated the fence.  (Mom did the painting part)

I then had him pick out whatever flowers he wanted in his garden.  This time of year you can get loads of sturdy flowers for $1 each.  You don't need a lot, since you are just making a tiny garden.

I let him pick out his own watering can at the store.  I wanted it to be something he picked and small enough for him to handle, because my plan is to have him water his plants every day as part of our routine.

It took us a few hours of playing in the dirt, and I let him pick where the plants went.  In the end we have a very sweet little garden that he can take care of all on his own this Summer!

D & her big brother

Darian's older brother came to visit us this last weekend. The last time they saw one another, she was less than a year old, now he is 18 and living in Oregon.
We showed him around Seattle and they spent as much QT together as they could in four days.
I was going to write a long blog about all of it, but it seems all too personal. So, instead, I will just tell you that it was a pleasure to have him here, and our time together went too fast. I look forward to seeing him again sooner than later. Here is a sweet photo of the two of them at The Triple Door.

Know when to walk away, know when to run.

I've had to deal with my fair share of crazy over the years. I think some of it is a part of growing up and part of it has to do with growing up in Alaska. Most of it was when I was a teenager.

There are so many "new" kinds of mental problems out there that I don't recall ever being warned about.
I wonder if it has something to do with the chemicals in the food or the water or just the population boom.
More people = more crazies?


In high school, I dated a boy for a very short period of time. We were never super close. He was trying to push the sex thing by the 2nd month we dated and I am not that kind of girl, so I broke it off with him.
I was very clear with him, I told him if he wanted to sleep with someone he need not be dating me. Since it never got too serious, I assumed the break up would be a little hard but not really painful. All break ups are hard.

WRONG.

He reacted to my breaking up with him by calling my house non-stop and showing up at my school, my job and at both of my parent's places unannounced and a lot.
When I refused to see him and told him to leave me alone, he broke into our house, stole a bunch of stuff including some of my journals and super valuable irreplaceable things that did not belong to me.
It was horrible and I never felt safe again. At least we knew who it was right away, but that didn't help much.
I went to school and started crying in my first period class, told my teacher about the break in. My teacher had the good sense to alert the school. It is a good thing he did, because the guy showed up at school that day, looking for me, and he had a gun! I didn't find out any of that until after he was arrested and suspended that he had been walking through the halls demanding to know where I was. It was a good thing I didn't eat lunch in my usual spot that day! On a whim I decided to have lunch somewhere else.
This was a time before school shootings and zero tolerance, so for what he did, and what he might have been planning to do, he barely got a slap on the wrist since it was two months before his 18th birthday. If that were to happen today, he would probably be doing hard time right now.

I don't understand at what point a person goes from seemingly normal to being able to justify acting that crazy to themselves. At what point did he say, "I am justified in breaking into her house and stealing from her family because she hurt my feelings!"

You hear about these husbands who kill their spouses because they don't want to deal with a messy divorce. When did that Peterson guy wake up and say, "Today I'm OK with killing my pregnant wife so I can make room for my lover."

When you see someone so obviously slipping down that slope and heading to crazy land, is there anything you can do to stop them? Do restraining orders really work? I mean it is just a bit of paper. Is that going to be enough of a wake up call for that person who doesn't take a hint, or is it just poking the bear? Would a restraining order have stopped my ex from breaking into my parent's house or would it have just mad him so angry that he would have come looking for me again right out of prison?

At what moment does interest turn to obsession? When does anger turn to blind fury that these people risk their whole futures for? How do you spot it in advance so you know to avoid it? How do you teach your kids to steer clear of it?

I was thinking about that boy, he was sweet, attractive, decent grades, from the outside he looked like he had a future as a good person with a good life to look forward to. Even my parents liked him. He was the most "Normal" guy I ever dated. He was a good looking football player with a row of perfect white teeth when he smiled, who opened doors and called my parents Sir and Ma'am. Nothing like the crazy Goth Punk rockers I usually went out with.

At what moment did he decide to throw it all away because a girl decided she wasn't ready for something more serious than he wanted from her?


My daughter is entering the year where a lot of girls get their first boyfriends at school. She isn't interested right now, but someday that will change and I will need to be ready for it. It's not just 'Stranger Danger' anymore. Now there are school shootings, kids on experimental medications left and right, drugs, Myspace, Facebook, suicide and pregnancy pacts, web sites that are pro-eating disorders and cutting... the list goes on and on and on and on...

Sometimes it just feels so overwhelming, everything that parents need to know to look for, how much we need to trust that they will stay protected when we send them to school or when they are out of our site, out on their own.

When she was a baby, she was so easy. She was sweet, never fussy and smiled and laughed all of the time. People with boys would tell me that even though boys were a handful when they were little, they were easier when they were older than girls. As my daughter gets older, and remains an amazing student and a wonderful person who is a joy to be around I keep waiting for the shoe to drop.
Now I'm beginning to think I heard it wrong. It isn't her who is going to change and go all crazy over night, it is the world around her that changes and gets so much harder for me to deal with and protect her from.





"Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
Ill be watching you

Every single day
And every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
Ill be watching you"
-Sting

My beautiful Auntie

I was showing a friend of mine my online photo album and he came across this photo and said, "Holy cow! She is beautiful! We know who you look like in your family!"
I told him that this photo is of my beautiful Aunt Mel. I've always thought she is very striking, so this was a major compliment. I know she reads my blog, so I thought she would get a kick out of hearing that someone thought we looked so much alike. (I am the baby hamming it up for the camera, BTW.)

Then I showed him this photo of my parents and he thought I looked a lot like my mom as well. They are sisters after all. It was kind of funny hearing someone refer to my mom as a "Smokin' retro babe" But hey, that's fine by me! He also said my Dad looks like Crispin Glover. People ALWAYS tell me that.
Loves to you Mom and Aunt Mel! Thanks for the great Genes!!

*Teehee*

Grandpa!

My Dad emailed these to me. They are of his father and family way back in the day. (Grandpa is the cute little boy right in the middle of the group shot and the little rascal below.)

Meet my niece!

This is Carys:

Flaming Lips- Awesome -Fall City Farm

We have been moving full speed ahead since Thursday evening. We've had Jon in town on the weekend without any studio time booked for the first time in ages, so we took full advantage of it.
Starting with Thursday, the whole family went to Darian's open house, met all of her teachers and then we ran downtown for The Flaming Lips show!! It was pretty incredible. I made a little video, but have not had a chance to upload it yet. Jon knows them from being on a lot of the same festival circuits and what not over the years, so we got free passes and after show passes. Darian really enjoyed the experience and I think they have a new fan now!


Friday eve we went and met a group of old friends for dinner. It was nice being around the old Alaskan crew. One if them I had not seen since Darian was a little baby. We laughed a lot.

Then Saturday eve we went to The Seattle Children's Theatre to see a show put on by a band called "Awesome" with special guest narrator, Sean Nelson. Jon has been working with them and they have a record release next week (On Jon's birthday!) at Chop Suey. The show was kind of a musical/comedy that they put together. It was intelligent and hilarious. We all really enjoyed it a lot, especially the kiddo. I would tell you to check it out, but it was the closing night. I hope they do it again, because it was really cool!

Today (Sunday) we went out to Fall City Farms to pick our own veggies. It was really fun getting out of the city and getting a chance to really get our hands in the earth. We picked Carrots, broccoli, beets, potatoes, and even a little Kale for our Hamsters and gerbils! We also bought some fresh cider and tomatoes and corn. We ended up with four bags of the freshest veggies and our grand total was under $30!! It is only 20 minutes out of town as well. We will be going back for pumpkins! (They start letting you pick pumpkins next Saturday!) They also had several cute and cuddly animals that we got to feed and pet. I took a ton of photos, so I think I will let them tell the story:



















Back to the city we go....

I'm not a baby machine...

I guess I'm at that age where I am expected to start nesting and having babies. I'm entering my third year of marriage, I'm turning 33 in a few months and I am at the average age that women are having babies these days. Why am I even thinking about these things? Well, because my email and junk mail are telling me to. It turns out that all of those websites you look at while you are wedding planning save your info and right around 3 years after you are married they start to nail you with baby making stuff. I've been getting a barrage of emails about joining "New Mommy Groups" and "What to do to get ready for baby" and I've been getting things in the mail for nursery catalogs and diaper services. I want to call every one of their customer service numbers and inform them that my 'baby' is almost thirteen years old, my childbearing days are long behind me and to go pester someone else.
Is that all we are to the marketers of the world? Are married women between 29-34 just babymakers as far as they are concerned? Don't they understand if I had more kids now I would literally be raising kids for my entire adult life?
Don't get me wrong, I love raising my daughter, it is the best thing I have ever done and I could not be happier with how great she is turning out. I'm a natural when it comes to parenting. But I would like to, at the very least, try and see if I can excel at anything else as much as I have at being a parent.
I would love to go back to school in a couple of years, maybe go into medicine like I always dreamed. Or maybe travel around the world a few hundred times and finally finish that book? Or maybe just work at a cafe and take life day by day meeting new and interesting people, or maybe finally make that movie I've got rolling around in my mind's eye.... The possibilities are endless and I am entering the prime of my life!
Raising children is a huge responsibility and should never be taken lightly. Just because I am really great at it doesn't mean I want to have a bunch of children I can't afford. To me, that would be terribly irresponsible.

Being a parent has been an amazing adventure, but I don't want that to be my only adventure. I've only got this one life, I need to make the most of it.

I heard it through the grapevine...

It has been brought to my attention that a relative of mine is very upset with me for something that I wrote on here. I looked over the particular blog entry in question and didn't see anything wrong with it.

When I asked what it was exactly that upset them this is the answer I got:

"Well, I didn't actually read what you wrote, but someone told me about it."

I'm speechless.


“Imagine books and music and movies being filtered and homogenized. Certified. Approved for consumption. People will be happy to give up most of their culture for the assurance that the tiny bit that comes through is safe and clean. White noise.”
-Dialdar Chuck Palahniuk

Let me tell you about the time my heart stopped.

My daughter and I have a few routines that we enjoy. One of them is our weekend movie/bookstore routine.
Every few weeks she and I will go see a movie together and after the movie we will go to the book store. She is an avid reader so she tears through books really fast. She already has a pretty impressive bookcase in her bedroom for being as young as she is.
Generally how it goes is; we go into the bookstore of our choice that day, she goes to the section with the books she likes to read and I go over to the section with the books I like to read. I usually already have in mind exactly what I am going to pick up, so it doesn't take me very long to decide. She likes to flip through each book and read the backs, or open it up and read a few pages in the middle to see if it is what she wants.
Most of the time these book stores will have some form of a coffee cart or a cafe so I will go over and buy my Latte and her Chai and will meet her back by her books to tell her that time is up and we need to go pay. (If I didn't do this, she would be looking all day.)
On this particular trip I went and purchased our drinks and meandered back over to where she is always standing and she was GONE!
I didn't panic right away. At first I said her name and peeked around the high bookcases. I said her name again a little louder this time running a full circle around them. Then I saw a man briskly walking out of the store who I remembered seeing looking in the same section as she was when I left her there, I also noticed an emergency exit to the store right next to the shelves that I had not ever noticed before.
At this point my imagination has imagined this man having something to do with why I can't find her. In my mind he had shoved her out the emergency door to a waiting villain in a windowless van and was rushing to meet them out back.
At this point I start shouting her name really loud, I feel like I am going to throw up and I am just about to go running after this man when I hear, "Mom! I'm right here! Gaawwwd! You don't have to shout!"
And there she was, standing right in front of me looking both seriously annoyed with me and pretty embarrassed. The most beautiful person I have ever seen, all pissed off and everything.
It took me every ounce of strength to not throwm my arms around her and burst into tears right then. The adrenaline rush had already started, so I felt almost the same as I did the last time I was the passenger in a major auto accident where no one was hurt. We had to sit down for about five minutes so I could regain my composure.
It turns out she already knew what she was going to get, so this time she decided to go find me. The bookcases are really high so we passed each other on opposite sides and didn't know.

So, this time it was OK. This time she was safe and I was just an overreacting mother, and I am OK with that.
It ended up being a good thing though, because it made us revisit the topic of stranger danger and why you should always keep your cellphone on and charged and "What to do if..."

That was the longest couple of minutes of my life.