Left To My Own Devices

Once upon a time – last week – I was at the mall with a couple of teenagers.

I was tired, they were not.

I sat down to rest my feet and it just so happens that Crate and Barrel was in front of me. I stared at the stemless wine glasses for  a while and then I decided I needed some.

So I did.

Then I called the girls and asked if they were done. They weren’t. I moved closer to the exit and sat down again to wait. It just so happens that the Pottery Barn was in my direct line of sight. I stared at the pillow case covered with birds and vines and I decided I needed it.

So I did.

On the way home I started to sing to the radio again. Kaitie-girl says to me, “Miss Puna?”

“Yes?”

“I think you’re cool.”

Awwww….

And then I lived happily ever after.

It’s Saturday…Bliss

I am sitting at my computer with the tv on and a mess in my kitchen but I’m blissful. It’s a beautiful Saturday morning and though I have already walked the dog and answered some emails, I really don’t have to do anything. Today, I’m doing what I choose to do. Most Saturday mornings I’m running the girl the farm or taking the boy to practice and finishing up some work that I left for myself from Friday.

But today…I don’t have those committments and it feels great.

Don’t get me wrong…there is plenty that need my attention. Especially around the house. It’s dirty. But I’ll do it later. Right now I’m doing this…

I was over at Katie’s place and she had this meme that I choose to do today. Just because I can. So I want to say “Good morning!” to you now, in case you get bored and don’t finish this post…

1. If your doctor told you TODAY that you were pregnant, what would you say?
I have actually thought about this quite a lot lately. I’ll just leave it at that.

2. Do you trust all of your friends?
Yes. But with caveats. For example, I don’t trust my friend Lisa not to eat out of my plate when we have Thai food.

3. Would you move to another state or country to be with the one you love?
Yes, and I have. Believe me. I’m live here now…

4. Do you believe that everything happens for a reason?
Absolutely. It’s called Providence but there’s also free will…that’s too complicated a concept for me to fathom right now. It’s Saturday.

5. Can you make a dollar in change right now?
Yes I can. If I go hunting.

6. Which one of your friends do you think would make the best doctor?
Neighbor Theresa. Wait, she is a doctor.

7. Are you afraid of falling in love?
I’m afraid of getting hurt. But that’s never stopped me before.

8. Is there someone who pops into your mind at random times?
Yes, and my husband wouldn’t like this but it’s our friend Chet. I don’t know why. Really I don’t.

9. What’s your favorite scar?
What?

10. When was the last time you flew in a plane?
Last June, coming home from Hawaii…ahhhh….

11. What does the last text message in your phone say?
It’s from the boy. “Make sure that if you buy me 2 shirts then they aren’t both longsleeve because i need more t-shirts” I was being his personal shopper last week while he played the Playstation.

12. What features do you find most attractive in the preferred sex?
The thing I love about the husband is that he loves me. That’s it. He’s not afraid of kissing me in public.

13. Fill in the blank. I love:
little baby ducks, old pickup trucks, slow moving trains, and rain. And I love you tooooo….

14. What is a goal you would like to accomplish in the near future?
Oh gees, I can’t answer this right now. Too heavy. I’m just trying to get through next week.

15. If you were to wake up from being in a coma for an extended time who would you call first?
The husband. Easy.

16. How many kids do you want to have?
Four.

17. Would you make a good parent?
I think this question should be answered by your kids and not by you.

18. Where was your default picture taken?
I don’t know what this means.

19. What’s your middle name?
I don’t have a middle name. Really.

20. Honestly, what’s on your mind right now?
Alright…I’m done now.

Thanks for hanging in! Katie did 88 of these questions. I can only get through 20 before I get bored. I hope your Saturday is as blissfully non-productive as mine has been so far…

Methinks She Doth Protest Too Much

At our last bunco meeting Neighbor Sue said, “Puna, don’t take anymore pictures of me. There’s too many pictures of me on the internet and people on my commute are looking at me funny.”

I didn’t realize that so many Washingtonians were accessing my blog on their commute but hey, all the broadband traffic that is shutting down AT&T could be an indication of furious activity on my blog. Ha!

So I complied and took photos of Neighbor Susan instead. Thank you, I’ll drink to that.

Then Neighbor Sue yelled at me across the room, “Hey Puna, take a picture of this!”

Methinks she doth protest too much.

She’s such a pretty lady.

So now she’s fair game again. Tonight I’m going to her house to eat and play bunco. I’m so excited! She’s a fantastic hostess and oh, her food is delicious. And her kitchen is rad. It’s also Lent and since many of the neighborhood ladies practice the no-meat-on-Fridays-during-Lent rule, I think it’s also going to be vegetarian healthy too. I’ll drink to that! Sorry. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with!

Oh and I really loved her sweater from last month. It looks like someone lovingly made it for her but she said she bought it at Target or something or other.

It’s Friday! Yea!

Champagne Taste

Last weekend we celebrated my little girl’s fourteenth birthday. We decided that since she was such a little lady now we would go upscale and fou fou.

So off we went to a fancy seafood restaurant.

We told her she could order whatever she wanted. And she wanted lobster.

And here comes the waiter…

To put a fou fou bib on a very reluctant girl. She refused to put it on.

When she was a little girl she wouldn’t eat lobster because she wanted to take them home as pets.

My how times have changed, but Kaitie-girl was a little more dubious. She had the filet mignon. I’m glad birthdays only come once a year.

The boy had his standard restaurant fare. Crab dip, fried calamari and french fries. And you can’t mix them either.

The husband and I had crackers because that’s all we could afford after the kids ordered their dinner.

The girls excused themselves and then came back and said, “You should see the bathroom!”

I then took a trip and realized that it looked just like my kitchen. The zebra wood, the green glass doors and modern door knobs are familiar accents. Except it’s a bathroom. Hmmm…

For dessert we had M&Ms in a pink bucket and in a pink polka dot bag. She was getting annoyed at her dad for eating them all. She has them hidden somewhere in the house, we can’t find them.

All in all it was a fun celebration. I love fou fou restaurants, as long as the food is worth the price. And it was. However, we are saving now for next year.  Something about champagne taste on a beer budget or some such thing.

Happy birthday little girl, we love you.

Hosted by Cecily and Kelli

Miss Alicia

Miss Alicia is my rescuer.

She’s my heroine.

And she’s awfully cute and smart too.

Yesterday was her first day of work. I now have someone who can help carry the burden. As soon as things slow down a little I’ll be able to visit your blogs again. But until then, please visit me tomorrow at Vision and Verb…

I Am…

Grease Is Not The Word

Ever since the boy started wrestling he has become less and less interested in the performing arts.

I LOVE the performing arts and I’m one of those moms who really like to see her kid on the stage. Especially one who is really, really good at it. He’s a natural, really. He likes music and he likes singing but recently he’s become a lot less enthused about being on stage.

After his duet last fall, he decided he didn’t like singing and dancing at the same time. I’m not sure why. He really couldn’t articulate it to me. But he did so well!

I hope his musical theater teacher never reads this.

He wouldn’t let me post photos of his last musical number. He did relent after I showed him this photo and said, “Pleeeeeese.” He squinted at it and since you can’t possibly tell that it’s him in the center of the photo:) he said, “Okay. But that’s the only one.” Pssst, he’s directly under the E and the N.

I have some other really good photos of the musical that will forever live in my hard drive never to see the light off day.

The spring musical this year is Grease. Grease! I LOVE Grease! After I saw the movie as a girl I played the soundtrack over and over. I begged him to try-out.

“Come on, you’ll like it!”

“No.”

“Just at least tryout. There’s no harm.”

“No.”

I thought perhaps he thought his friends on the team would make fun of him.

“You can wait until after wrestling if you want.”

“No.”

Part two of this story is this.

My precious boy was having problems keeping his grades up this quarter. I believe that it was because he was spending so much time with wrestling and not enough time on his school work. He is however, gifted intellectually, which in his case works against him because he doesn’t have to try that hard to do well. You know what I mean? Even so, he’s managed to make the honor roll each quarter. We have given him the “Imagine what you can do if you really tried” speech. I think it’s gone in one proverbial ear and out the other.

Our school district came out with this great new grading system this year. It lets parents keep a closer eye on the kids’ progress, and not get “surprised” at the end of the quarter.

It’s all the better to let us micro-manage you my dears.

So I was starting to worry. We know he’s taking a big work load, AP course, honors this and that…We have imparted on him the importance of grades, that tenth grade was an important year, that cumulative averages are important, that this counts! You’re tuning out too aren’t you?

As I continued to get emails showing a downward slide in grades, I was beginning to think that no come-back was in sight. So I told him that if he didn’t make the honor roll, he was going to have to try out for the musical.

And that was that.

And you probably know the ending to this story…we got his report card and he made the honor roll. He pulled it out. Somehow he pulled it out. And I believe it took a little bit of effort.

See what you can do if you really tried? But now I won’t see him in Grease. Ugh, it’s hard being a parent.

Hosted by Cecily and Amy

Half-Breed

Ding Dong!

Who is it?

Landshark.

You’re not a Landshark! You’re Gigi! Come on in!

Those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about are either too young or too intellectual to have watched such banality.

But the rest of us thought it was funny.

Anyway, this post is about the Saturday Night skit. It’s about Gigi, the half-breed who lives down the street. She really not a half-breed per se…she’s a thoroughbred Labra-Doodle. And so lies the weirdness of nature as God designed it.

Maybe we shouldn’t have let her inside.

For you see, dogs can be bred for specific characteristic and behavorial traits. If you want a breed to specifically snif out bombs at an airport, you can breed one in less than four generations. If you want a dog with an acute sense of hearing, you can breed on the same way. All dogs are descendants of the wolf but generations of breeding domesticity into them have completely removed the independent wolf instinct.

Labra-Doodles are a cross between Labradors and Poodles. They are bred to have the easy going, loyal, and disposition of Labradors but have the intelligence and the non-sheddability of Poodles. It means they supposedly don’t shed. I know it’s not a word.

How do I know? I saw it on the National Geographic Channel while on vacation to New Orleans a couple of years ago.

Really.

So my weird mind asks this question. What about other breeds? Cats? Rabbits?….People? Gulp.

Told you my mind works in weird ways.

She’s so cute.

As it turns out, this phenomenon of breeding is confined to just dogs, as far as we know. They’ve tried it with cats to no avail. No one has actually tried on humans, as far as we know.

Sorry to get all Dr. Frankenstein on you…but I know that you’ve thought about it too.

Maybe not.

One thing for sure. Gigi the Labra-Doodle who lives down the street can beat my own sweet dog in a beauty contest any day. Somebody neglected to breed our dog for the “pretty” gene. But she IS ours and we love her shed-like-crazy-bald-headed-stout-big-boned self.

Thank goodness it’s not all about beauty.

Time to go home Gigi. We have enough animals running around here.

Posted on Wordful Wednesday.

A Blogging Sweetie For Monday Memories

The lovely Gayle from Planet M Files asked me for my address a couple of weeks ago and I obliged. As time passed, I forgot about it. I think the snow really slowed down the mail.

Last week, this cute little hand made bookmark showed up in a card. I was so touched. It was so cute and…did I say hand made? Well it’s hand made.

I put it in a book that I received from Neighbor Susan called Short Girls by Bich Minh Nguyen. It was about a Vietnamese family who immigrated to America and it followed the lives of two sisters as they struggled to assimilate into American society as first generation immigrants.

As I read it, I was struck by how much the characters mimicked my own life…or rather how much own life mimicked the characters.

My sister and I had a relationship similar to the girls in the book, our families both struggled with the language, there’s the conflict between Asian culture and American culture and always…the trying-to-fit-in as much as we can so we don’t seem “different.”

And weirdly so…my sister’s husband’s name is Gary, like in the book…(cue Twilight Zone music.)

And both of us are short.

Except that Gary is her husband, not her lover…and he wasn’t married when they met. He was already twice divorced.

Except that we have a brother.

Excpet that I’m still married, unlike the character in the book.

And I’m Thai, not Vietnamese. Don’t say it, we’re NOT all the same. Neighbor Susan is first generation Chinese by the way. So there.

But other than that…

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, though I’m glad I wasn’t the main character, geez.

Gayle, thank you so much for the lovely lovely bookmark. It made reading the book so much more enjoyable. And the gesture was so sweet. I don’t “know” you but I sense that you have a heart of gold. And I love hearing about your family and your dog Timmy.

Posted on YOUR site, Planet M Files.

A Love Story

Last weekend, during the biggest blizzard of the century, the husband called me to tell me that he was not able to make it home. The airport was closed, all flights were canceled and everyone, whether they liked it or not, was staying right where they were.

He sounded upset, disappointed, and slightly out of sorts. He went on to say that he was going to fly into the closest airport, then rent a car and drive home. I couldn’t understand the urgency and I told him he was not doing anything of the sort. I tried to assure him that the kids and I were fine. We had electricity, cable, the internet and no place we had to be. We were actually kind of excited about the storm.

But then, he told me this.

That he had a planned a get away for us. That we were to fly to Boston on Monday and stay until Wednesday. That while we were there, we were going to have dinner with the fabulous Marcie Scudder and her husband. Really? The photographer that I’ve admired since I started my photography obsession? That Marcie Scudder? The person with whom I have a collaboration with at Vision and Verb but yet have never met. That Marcie Scudder?

We were then going to dinner at a restaurant owned by Ming Tsai, a celebrity chef that I’ve admired for a long time.

That he had coordinated this time off with my boss, the gym where I teach, and my mother was coming down to stay with the kids while we were gone. It was an elaborate scheme, everyone who was a part of it confided to me afterward that they were bursting to tell me.

And now we can’t go because he can’t get home.

He was very very disapointed and he apologized profusely.

Me? I couldn’t have been any happier if we had actually gone. With the exception of when he asked me to marry him, he has never been able to surprise me. We will get to do all those fantastic things one day. But it doesn’t have to be today. Today, I’m loving my hubby, the most romantic man in the world.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

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