I wasn't kidding

These are samples of the grotesque/illegal items available for sale in that creepy store.

While you were out...

I was really sad to be away from my kids for a week. Now that I'm back it's like we're strangers. They've grown and matured so much I barely recognize them and I have a sinking feeling Dazee doesn't remember me that well. So heartbreaking...

What happened to me?

I couldn't sleep a wink on our red eye flight; it was like torture.
When I was young, I was able to sleep at anytime anywhere. I remember
sleeping for 20 hours straight on a flight to Bangkok. When we landed,
I was upset and groggy from a deep sleep, I even forgot my luggage on
the plane. I could never see myself be this carefree or irresponsible
now.

He did it to me again

We woke up at 430AM to ride a stinky Denali school bus shuttle.

Fur real?

We just came out of a very creepy store that sold everything that I
thought was illegal. IVORY, boasts the sign in the front. In addition
to ivory, they were selling mammoth tusks, skunk skins, dog heads,
plastic beads, knives and a taxidermist zoo, complete with bear, lion,
moose, elk, rabbit, etc.

Midnight sun

It's a quarter to 9 and I'm getting ready to ride a tram that's going
to take us up 2300 feet to dine at the top of a mountain with views of
glaciers and everything around us. The sun is shining as bright as it
did at 9 o'clock this morning and I just slathered on some sunscreen.
We're planning to take a hike after dinner and get back into our room
by midnight! I'm very pleased about where we're staying tonight
because it's a 4 star hotel. Nice work, Josh.

Fatherhood the sequel

Isn't this sweet? Frank gives his first bottle to Daisy.

Basil plants

I finished putting the rest of the 2 dozen or so plants RC gave me into the ground today. I hope they thrive. I will update you with pictures when I get back from my trip to Alaska next week.

Just produce them and they will grow

I've been feeling a lot of guilt about how I should be spending more time at home or mother differently. And that maybe I should have waited for more spacing between my children so that I can give better individual attention to each. Today, someone at work provided some words of comfort and hopefully wisdom to me. She has teenage kids and said that if you take a group of kids, look at them, interview them, look at their grades/activities, it's not like you can separate them into two distinct groups: Oh-those-kids-moms-worked-full-time-jobs and these-kids-came-from-households-with-stay-at-home-moms.

It's a relief to know that they'll all thrive and that it's hard to screw up big time. A lot of it seems hard-wired and beyond your control?

I have a great wife!

I can not believe how sweet my friend RC is...after reading my blog which lamented how I won't have any Thai basil in the garden, she took the bull by the horns and bought me 16 lively plants! Contrast this to my husband, who ordered the seeds at least a month too late from a sketchy purveyor in eBay (he only paid $1 but the seeds never arrived). The plants are so nice, I'm sure she got them by doing that normal people do - going into a nice store and getting some help from knowledgeable sales people which ended with the reward of going home with some nice looking plants. If I were to get a divorce from my friend, she's going to have to pay a lot in alimony. I'm going to argue to the judge that she got me accustomed to a certain style of living. I'm sure she'll retort that my husband's lifestyle should be the marker but I'll argue that he just was an affair based on looks while she was the person I depended on for plants, food, conversation, etc.!

Effective diet?

Here we are, catching her in the act at various stages. Dazee pretty much stuffs as much food as she can in her mouth. She stops when her gag reflex kicks in and then she throws up. Yesterday, I pulled out a grape tomato, and two large strawberries. It was like seeing a magic trick (the one where he pulls out a very long string of hankerchiefs from something unlikely, like a parrot's throat). As I pulled each morsel out of her mouth, I was in complete amazement over how she got that much volume of food inside her mouth.

4 girls!

It was like running a high quality day care today; we had 4 children in our backyard. High quality because the ratio of adult to children was 1 to 1. Although some of us weren't paying that much attention...

Blondes have more fun

I like to think my 2nd daughter is blond. Her hair is lighter than everyone else in the family. But when we put her next to an Aryan baby, it's pretty clear, she's a brunette, and a chunky one to boot.

Give me some of what they're smokin'

A friend of Josh's from college, (names have been changed to protect their privacy), Smoke, his wife and one year old daughter came to stay one night with us. It was a lot of fun having them and for me, it was interesting to see how another couple behaves towards each other and towards their child. Mostly it made me feel like J and I are so type A. They are so relax-o. Smoke even fell asleep on the living room floor, when he woke, I offered some fruit medley, he declined ever so contentedly, "No thanks, I don't think I could be happier than I am right now." But we only had a half hour to get them out the door to the airport! Josh and I started shitting bricks for them. We tried to rush them, but Smoke gave me a nice talk at a very leisurely pace on how he's missed flights before and concluded that it's really OK to miss them. One of the most egregious examples he gave was missing a flight to a work retreat. He had a to buy another ticket on the spot on his own dime! To which Josh offered his iron-clad philosophy, "We don't miss flights in this family. That's not an option." I felt a little nostalgic for my old life, where I didn't stress about missing flights. I guess I could go either way, Type Anal or zzz. Being with J has made me a little more uptight about flights.

Mike Tyson bee

Whenever there's a bee nearby, I always thought Josh went nuts. He would go into this panicky, fearful, over-protective mode - "Stay away!" he would bark, while commanding me to run as fast as possible. If I didn't go berserk like him and make a show of flight-or-fight, he would take matters into his own hands and try to push or throw me away from the bee. In fact, I always thought he was over-reacting and treated his reaction as Tarzan-like chest thumping but in a funny way because a big man was afraid of a little bee.
Well I got my come-uppance last week when I got stung by a bee. It's been ridiculously painful. Because it's only the second bee sting in my lifetime, I didn't really have a good idea of how much it can hurt.
Then I recalled that in Thai, a bee sting is called a bee punch. That's a much more accurate statemtent of what happened to me. I got punched by a bee.

Mutiny

Why are companies such flexible job haters? Who came up with this 9-5 (or longer), five days a week bullshit? Many people I know would love to have a flexible job - I know I would love it and be just as productive if not more, if I could get Wednesdays off or work from home 2 days a week or work part time and job-share with someone.

Literally bringing home the bacon

Adding to my idea of mandating food scrap recycling, I'm ready to impose that everyone with a suitable plot of land grow something edible or raise sheep, pigs, chickens or cows. Wouldn't it be great if we could exchange produce/meat/livestock products with neighbors? I offered this idea to Josh on the train but he poo-pooed it, thinking that we can't abandon technology and go back to our ancestral model of acquiring food. Ironically, I thought growing your own stuff is more ethical and sustainable...Last night I was reading a few things about Monsanto, how much chemical processing and fossil fuels it takes to get food to the table and how evil and scary certain industrial practices are. I really feel bad for how animals are treated and scared about all the antibiotics and hormones used in meat/dairy/egg processing.

Don't call Social Services on us

Wow! The new camera is so good at capturing images that it's exposing all of our parental weaknesses. Note to self: wipe boogers off child.

If I were mayor

Why doesn't every municipality mandate food scrap recycling? An added benefit is that we will have compost available for the entire town. Instead, every town I've ever lived in has recycling only for glass, metal and paper. It takes a lot of energy to recycle these things and who knows if it's worth it in the end? Whereas composting food scrap is easy, fast and really works.

Hurray!

My very cheap husband finally caved in after years of whining (from me, in case anyone is wondering) and got us a digital SLR. Since it's late right now, the only pictures we can take are of our kids sleeping. I'm amazed at the quality because the room was pitch black when these pictures were taken (which also explains why they're at an awkard angle). I've instructed my mom to dress them in their Sunday's best when I come home from work tomorrow so I can take pictures of them.