We've Come Undone

Another weekend with a lot of plans to get things done and a lot more left undone when all is said and...well, done.

We insisted that Mancub spend time with us. He called on Friday to say he wanted to spend the night at a friend's house, then tried to negotiate when we said "No", then tried to get us to explain why when we wouldn't budge. You would have thought he had never heard the word "No" before.

Something I've learned, and often still forget, is that you can't ask a teenage boy if he wants to do something, you have to say "we are going to...". Options sound great when one is reading books and thinking about how to be an awesome, progressive, nurturing parent. Reality, however, dictates a much less flexible hand. This is what we are doing. Get moving. Sounds harsh, but there usually is almost no fuss 10 minutes later, and usually smiles. Options lead directly to sullen.

With that in mind, we told him we were going back to Ikea. Ikea is the magic land where we have a second residency. We met our friend M~ there to have some meatballs and get a little help with the train of carts we used to get our latest booty. Now we have more boxes of things to put together scattered around our home.

Because that wasn't enough fun and wallet cleansing, we then went to Fry's, home of the North Korea-esque check out policy, where one employee introduces you to another employee who walks you and your purchases to yet another employee that takes you money and sends you to a final team of employees to check your receipt and purchases. Mancub got yet another wireless device that I don't understand and that still doesn't seem to correct his inablility to get on line, Papa Seed got an early birthday present in the form of a green iPod (we are now a three iPod household which we never saw coming three months ago when two of us were totally repulsed by the little things), and at the very last minute I grabbed a copy of Midnight Cowboy on DVD because it was dirt cheap, it is one of my all time favorite movies, I caught it out of the corner of my eye when the third North Korean Soldier was walking us to the counter, and damn it - I wanted a present too.

We are going to be riding the Poverty Train BIG TIME as soon as we reenter reality.



Front Yard Boys

The furry boys are getting settled in their new home. Baby Boy managed to open up a replacement cat door that we got to replace the one he destroyed (although we have yet to get a cat) and dragged a new Ikea Welcome Mat through it. Tore the mat in five places after less than 12 hours of welcoming folks to our home. I finally made a left instead of a right when I walked them on the trail behind our house, and WOW do we live in the most Magical Place On Earth. I still can not believe we live here. I can't believe it. As I was walking along the trail, that is dotted by homes several yards from the trail, and crosses wooden bridges and running water and hummingbirds fly above, I kept thinking to myself I am the most fortunate person on earth. It really is magical.



Baby Hops

Papa Seed managed to tackle several projects, including getting the Home Depot tool shed put together, getting the mountain of goods stacked outside down to a small hill, and planting the hops - giving them a little twine to get going on. Soon they will climb that wall and be huge. Then they will be beer. He did the same thing at the last house, and they thrived. All of this was done while sporting his new green iPod, which he is now fondly attached to, and there is yet another person in the house who now can't hear you when you talk to him.

Mancub invited a couple of his friends to come over to our house today (part of our deal the other night - invite them to our place). They ate candy and played video games and watched funny, vulgar videos on You Tube - which is soooo adolescent of them. Then we took the boys to the Taco Truck before driving them home.


Taco Truck

He got to show off having a Taco Truck in his neighborhood, and seemed quite pleased by sharing his new area of expertise with the kids from the other side of the tracks.

And now another week awaits with so much left to do.

Fruit And Meat

Yesterday's newspaper had a very interesting story about the lack of stores where one can be fresh fruit/produce in our neighborhood. Within two blocks I have a couple of options where I can get a high fructose carbonated soda to go along with some heavily processed deep fried nonfood (don't let that fool you into thinking I still wouldn't find it tasty), but you almost have to have a passport and hiking gear to get anything close to what grows or is raised on a farm. I guess the things that are raised on a farm grow as well. I repeat myself again and again.

Sad, and like everything that seems like it should have a most simple solution, the resolution seems endlessly complex. Why is that always the case? Truly we need a food revolution in this country. I toy with the idea of going back to school to study urban planning, or some kind of urban agriculture type thing, but I just don't think I'm cut out to go back. Papa Seed has been back at it for the last eight years, and he is much smarter and hard-working than I'll ever hope to be. Maybe someone else is going to have the save the world.

As I was walking by one of the cigarette and candy bar stores today, I was remembering the little mercados in San Francisco that seemed to be dotted along every block where you could get a steamed tamale, a fresh mango, a choice of bananas, and that high fructose carbonated drink - or something much more fruit-filled and nutritious. We need those here. We need fruit stands, and stores that offer fresh baked goods, and alternatives to bags of chips and corn dogs. Although, again, I love corn dogs.

I'm hearing a calling to be a food activist, damn voices in my head. I haven't a clue as to how to start. I picked up Hopes Edge several years ago and was inspired when I would sit and read it, but I never finished it. I found it when we moved and put it in a special box so I could start it again, but I'm not sure which special box that is. I did finish The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved last year or the year before and I was ready to take to the streets. And I should not forget that I did everything short of standing on street corners with pamplets to sing the praises of The Omnivore's Dilemma, about as religious an experience I could have with my clothes on and my mind unaltered by recreational chemicals. Of course, I still hit the snack machine at least once a day at work, still put away a huge bag or two or three of tortilla chips more often than we stop for gas, and weigh three times what I weighed in High School, so I'd be a rather suspicious food activist. Still, I think I should at least stick my head in the neighborhood association building, or walk over to the community garden, or strike up a conversation with the gas station owner that makes a living on Twinkies and Coke.

We bought a half of a pig - she no longer lives - from our friend's friend's daughter who raises them. We shared a pig a year or so ago in the same way. The meat ends up costing about two bucks a pound or less. We know where it comes from. We know how it was raised. At some point in the next week or two, we need to go pick it up from Port Orchard, where the butcher has turned it into chops and bacon and other delicious parts. I'm okay with someone turning me into delicious parts after I go too. The meat will be fatty and I imagine quite salty, but it should be good. However I won't be around for refunds or complaints. It beats eternity in the ground.

Chicken Soup

Although both Papa Seed and I took the bus to work today, we got a call that Mancub was sick at school. We had to contact his girlfriend's Mother to pick him up and take him to her house, while Papa Seed hopped on the bus to come home, get the van, and head over there to pick him up. Then they came to get me at work, so although I mastered the art of iPod enhanced coatfree bus riding this morning, I didn't get an opportunity to further refine it this afternoon. It also meant bypassing the Immigrant's Right Protest - a protest that I fully support. But we had a sick son. Gotta take care of the kid.



Chicken Coop


I've got to start doing some research on what we need to do to get the chicks for the chicken coop. I've got a couple of books and bookmarked web sites, and we did take the Urban Chicken Coop Workshop from Seattle Tilth a few years ago, so I should be prepared, but I'm not. Papa Seed is more familiar with this kind of thing having grown up on a farm. I could just let him take over, but the chickens are going to be a family project. Maybe this weekend, or maybe next, we will go get the little critters. They will need to be housebound and warmed up the first month or two - that I remember. We don't want to wait too much longer to get them. Nor do we have a lot of room for excuses since the house came with an amazing coop and run.

I think I'll start with the article in Mother Earth News, see how intimidated that makes me, and try to come up with a plan. I want to hear those fussy little creatures in our backyard. I love the sound of chickens in the morning.

Floored

Papa Seed putting in the Marmoleum floor in our Utility Room

Another room pretty much up and running this evening, now with new floors. Papa Seed finished the floor up yesterday, he moved my old desk in today, and right now he is using his laptop in there while my clothes are spinning in the shiny big dryer that came with the place. In the last house, the broken down washer and dryer were in a dark, moldy, dusty basement where slivers of wood and cobwebs would gather on freshly washed clothes and rats would leave their rat poop while they were taunting us to be caught.

We still have to get a little table set up to fold clothes on. I found one on line via Ikea that I like. Folding clothes is my favorite household chore. In fact, it may be the only household chore I can even tolerate. Now I'll get to do it in a clean, bright, perfectly cheerful room. With Marmoleum floors.

Hell and Heaven

This morning was Day One of riding the bus to work. Papa Seed and I worked it out that he will walk the fluffy boys in the morning so I can just worry about getting to work. It went fairly smoothly, but I need to work out a few kinks. I have no patience for the I never ride the bus folks and I hope as gas prices soar that they become an endangered species, however I am not crazy about tacking on an extra 45 minutes to my commute.

Since I leave pretty darn early, I expected the bus to be empty. When I got to the bus stop there were already five folks there, and once we got on there were no seats left. Call me a Bourgeois Swine but I want a seat on the bus. It got more crowded before we hit the highway, and the temperature in the bus seemed to be 153 degrees with 97% humidity. I was carrying my work bag, a to-go mug, and wearing a coat. Tomorrow I will not be wearing a coat and I'm putting a thermos in my bag. That will free up one hand and hopefully reduce the sweat to a slow moist flow rather than a broken fire hydrant. I was hoping I could read. I can't read when I'm holding on for dear life, with one hand on a coffee mug, with sweat leaving the top of my head and heading towards my thighs in record speed. And the bus driver seemed to be reaching record speeds on the highway as well.

So in addition to the things I've learned to do tomorrow, I will get my iPod ready and hooked in my ears like the hipsters all do before I get on the bus. No coat, No to-go mug, iPod ready. Since I have probably listened to my iPod for all of an hour since getting it, and since I've added about 300 podcasts to the thing, this is taking advantage of my investment.

Once downtown, and I love being downtown in the morning and I love the feeling of freedom I have when I ride the bus, I waited for the novelty streetcar or SLUT, a perfectly ridiculous expense in the vastness of public transportation needs. It is not without charm, and shiny as well. The motorman was friendly, the seats way too tight but clean, and there is a canned articulate female voice announcing each stop along the mile or so it travels. Each stop is sponsored by a public agency or health institution, so I learned. It was cute in a Disneyland kind of way. As we all know, the difference between Disneyland and Hell is one week. I doubt I'll find the voice cute next Wednesday.

I got to work not only on time - perhaps a first - but early.

Not quite a hike up Mount Everest, but my adventure for the day. Work goes by quickly on Wednesday since it is a meeting day and a short day. During lunch I checked in on My Space where for the first time I joined a "conversation" in one of their forums - this one on gay parenting. I found it last night and couldn't resist in spite of knowing better. Mancub came in when I was typing something up and asked what I was doing, so I told him I was in an on-line discussion about gay parents and that some of the folks didn't think gay people should ever be parents. He asked what I said back, and I told him that I had posted "Y'all can kiss my ass! which he found funny. It wasn't what I really had done however, and so I confessed I hadn't. I said some of the folks were saying that it is wrong for the kids and that the kids don't have a say and don't get to pick their parents. He laughed even more and said I got to pick you guys! with a huge smile. I said, and that is actually what I wrote.

The responses I read during my lunch break were less than kind. I'm apparently being selfish and ruining his life. Foster kids aren't for experimenting. Blah, blah fuckin' blah. I need to crawl into a hole like these folks and ignore outside influences. Or stop expecting a civilized discussion in a My Space forum.

Ah, but the end of the day and the bus ride home was fine and I got to read. And this is what I get to home to each day. Heaven.





Our Creek

Howl

Actually it was less a howl than a cry, or a series of cries, but I'm pretty sure we just had our first aural "sighting" of the coyotes. It was one of those what is that? sounds, and then the furry boys stood up with tilted heads. I asked Papa Seed if he heard what I was hearing and he said Is that the coyotes? We ran to the door, but then the sirens started. He said he was having lunch at the same table as some guys (at the Taco Truck, where we also had dinner) who said they hear them whenever there are sirens.

Soon this will probably become commonplace, but not this evening.

Papa Seed spent the day putting the marmoleum floor in the Utility Room. We almost have that together. Right now he is using the studfinder to help him put up some shelves. Studfinder. Yep, the jokes just wrote themselves, and although we try to avoid the easy ones - we had to do a few witty moments of old school camp, because genetically we couldn't not.

And speaking of old, I'm now getting those cuts on my arm that appear from nowhere, bleed painlessly for a few hours, then leave a dried deep red memento. For his part, Papa Seed has started sporting the socks and sandals look - in fact he walked the Home Depot runway with it tonight. Oh the countless hours when we would laugh and smirk and howl, with pointed fingers and rolling eyes for that one. Now, there he is enjoying, as he puts it, the comfort that he never knew and now understands. Since he is over 40, as he also would be the first to tell you, he doesn't need to care.

Frites and Crumb

Mancub made this in Wood Shop. We love it - made us laugh hysterically. We tried using Mr. Gumball for dog snacks, but they don't work out so well as it turns out. We will need to get some human snacks. Maybe gumballs, but now that I'm thinking about it I think maybe the coconut jelly beans I've been craving would work out nicely in Mr. Gumball. I used to hate jelly beans, but I don't anymore. Coconut jelly beans are a special kind of pleasure.

There is so much to do that I have kind of checked out and have been playing on the computer. I made a playlist on one of those sites where you do such things and then force your musical tastes on others who dare look at your profile in an on line community. I think folks should feel lucky to hear Frank Sinatra singing Cycles as I'm doing now, or Victor Jara or Silvio Rodriguez, which are the first two songs that come on. It was fun making a playlist. However, there were all kinds of errors on that site. Mislabeled songs and singers, misspelled words - that kind of thing.

Mancub's girlfriend (I have to come up with an online name for her, to protect the innocent) came over this morning and we dropped the two of them off at the ramen house they love. Then, after a couple of restaurant and parking situations that didn't work out, Papa Seed and I headed over to Cafe Presse, where we have only been once before but promised to go back. My blood sugar was dropping like concrete blocks from a bridge, so I started off grouchy but after getting in some good grub all was right. I felt like the dirty old man that I would be if I had more energy enjoying the pulchritudinous of our bearded waiter. Plus, the coffee there is great. I had a dish with gooey melted cheese and ham, plus we shared their pomme frites. Now those suckers are damn good. Crispy golden little sticks of bliss. I tried to eat slowly like the skinny hipsters at the other tables seemed to be doing, but I could have easily had buckets of those dropped in a trough and gone at them on all fours in seconds flat.

That jump-started me enough so that we could finally, finally make it to the Frye to see the next to last day of the R. Crumb exhibit. R. Crumb is of god status to me, and I wanted to get to this on opening day, but things kept happening. It was a really nice exhibit, and seeing the cross hatching and dried ink right there with the naked eye made the work all the more incredible (to me, one person wrote in the comment book that the exhibit was without any value whatsoever and the space would have been more appropriate for an artist with more talent and less money). He makes it look so easy. I'm eager to get my drawing table set up now. I probably won't be doing pictures of massive boobs and tremendous female thighs myself, but it sure is inspiring to see what that man has done.