You're Doing It Wrong

Last night was our lecture night featuring Stephen Sondheim. Mr. Sondheim apparently doesn’t do prepared speeches so the lecture folks convinced him to come and do a “conversation” with Frank Rich. I’m not into musical theater at all. I was trying to think of the last musical theater I saw and I came up with Annie (80’s) and Jesus Christ Supertar (70’s and there’s a story there but no time to get to it now) and that’s pretty much it. Ever. There might be some school productions I’m forgetting but I don’t think so.

Regardless, the talk was WONDERFUL and I’m certain my sweetheart will post a great review later and I will update and link to it when he does.

My point is, I left my house yesterday at quarter to 7am and didn’t return home until 10pm. So, between the big party weekend and my body’s complete rejection of the notion of “sleeping through the night” along with a surprisingly busy work week, I’m still in zombie mode and am behind on everything and continue to phone-in my blog posts and prop them up with old family photos.

Here’s another classic which I estimate to be around 1970. Nice butt Grandma! I dig the car, too. This was from a trip to Hawaii. My sister thinks Mom was helping her with “her shells” while I’m grinning for Dad with the camera.

Check out my hot Mom and me. (I’m the one with the pacifier.) This is probably Zuma Beach in 1964.

Excellent weekend. Really spectacular. The party went great and everyone seemed to have a good time. I have tons of pictures which I will organize as soon as I can but probably not until the end of the week.

Yesterday I took the folks on a Powell’s run and it was the perfect day, sunny and nice without a coat even though I had a hangover so bad I wanted to die.

My dear husband wrote an item about his music selections for the party here. And he was quite a prince this weekend helping keep things organized, running around with last minute errands and picking up the slack when I was hobbling around yesterday.

Last night Mom and Dad and Priscilla came over for leftovers at our house and then Mom and Dad went off to the motel with the park & fly and they should be sitting in a plane right now getting ready to take off for Hawaii. Lucky.

I had trouble falling asleep last night and woke up a bunch of times, so still not quite feeling like my sparkling self yet. And of course I waltzed into my office to find a couple of forest fires so no slacking for me.

The difference between my sister and me is that I go drama queen in situations where she appears to be barely ruffled.

Many eons ago when we were in college we were on some sort of road trip. I can’t remember where we were going but we were in her car, which was originally my car, which was a 1972 Plymouth Duster that had once been owned by our grandparents. I could probably get at least a half dozen good blog posts out of that car. I’ll have to see if there’s a good photo somewhere.

Anyway, on this particular trip we were low on gas and this was the kind of car that went from a quarter tank to stuttering on fumes in a heartbeat. Knowing this, we took an unknown exit which led to the backroads and not a strip of gas stations and chunk chunk. We were out of gas. I immediately went into freak-out mode convinced that our very lives were at risk and days later people would find our bodies in a ditch.

My sister calmly told me to get out of the car. She locked it and grabbed the gas can (out of gas, not an uncommon occurrence) and off we went, no civilization in sight. Within minutes a car filled with strangers pulled up and offered us a ride. As I protested, “How do we know they aren’t blood-thirsty murderers?” my sister calmly ordered me to get into the car.

The world’s nicest people took us to the gas station and back to our car.

We lived on into middle age. So far.

I bring this up because she’s on her way here right now and just phoned because she got mixed up and went over a bridge she shouldn’t have. When I first moved to Portland I was perpetually lost. It took months before I didn’t cry when I ended up driving over a bridge I shouldn’t have. I was panicking for her, thinking “Oh no, how will she find her way?”

She phoned us from the car, completely calm. “What do I do next?”

And she’s good at fixing things. Why didn’t I inherit those genes?

I saw lots of daffodils in my neighbors’ yards but mine aren’t quite there yet.

I can’t tell you how much more fun it is to take photos with the new camera. None of this take a picture and then go take a nap while a little red light flashes and the camera decides when its going to take another photo. I’m looking forward to playing with it this weekend when the group is in town.

My Mom is celebrating a big birthday this year and we’re having a party at the Kennedy School. We’re in the Mina Parsons room. We’ll have a big dinner on Saturday night and in the down time do some field trips possibly to: Bob’s Red Mill, Uwajimaya and/or Powell’s Books. It looks like the weather may be doo-doo but if not we might also do a nice walk on the Eastbank Esplanade or maybe at Vancouver Lake.

Meanwhile, I decided to take a half-day off tomorrow so I have extra time to do errands before everyone rolls into town. I need to go back to Toyota and have them look at the dummy light which let’s all cross our fingers takes 15 minutes or less. And I need to do a Target run and organize some food and photos and generally get my act together, which certainly couldn’t take more than a half day.

One thing about my lazy days is that I always really want them to be productive but the rule of what constitutes valid productivity is a secret, even from me, thus I am never satisfied no matter what I do.

I woke at a decent hour and read Temeraire: Throne of Jade for a couple hours. There are about 100 pages in the first 150 which have woefully little Temeraire (a dragon) which is the only reason to show up for the book and was causing me some dismay. But he got more active and I would have liked to read longer but the secret productivity called.

I put on my yoga clothes and then sat in front of the computer (one of my fitness secrets) and caught up on email and RSS feeds. Bob said he wanted to go for a walk so I changed into walking clothes. It was sunny and in my head I was thinking it was nice and warm out there and it was barely over 40 degrees so we kept a brisk pace.

When we got home I put on yardwork clothes and worked out front in the sun (now more than 50 degrees) and raked and whacked rose bushes and pulled weeds and destroyed some prime slug habitat. My arms turned to noodles in a few hours so I didn’t finish but then finishing yardwork tasks is not one of my superpowers.

Now I’m sleepy and looking at the papers on my desk that I not-so-affectionately refer to as “my pile” and I’m wishing I would have dealt with them earlier. I’ll have to shuffle and make sure there isn’t anything time sensitive and they will have to sit for awhile longer.

Tonight on Masterpiece Theatre: Emma. Yay.

I’ve needed to take my car in for an oil change for awhile now but it always seemed like there would be a better day sometime in the future. I finally made a point to get it in this morning and it got an A+ and then as I pulled out of Safeway an hour later, I noticed a strange dash-light I’ve never seen before was on and when I checked in the book it says it’s my rear-light malfunction indicator. (Is it just me or does that sound vaguely pornographic?) I’m going to have to check it again when Bob is home and hope maybe the paper towels were putting too much pressure on something in the trunk causing the light to come on and really it’s all fine. Cross your fingers for me.

I had a hectic week but not horrific. I had a couple of late nights and weird busy days at the office. It wasn’t like I was so stressed with deadlines or something, it was like 10 things all happened at the same time. I’d come back to my desk from sending a fax and there would be a voice message and as I checked that my phone would ring and then while I was on the phone my cell would ring and then someone would come in my office and say that the fax didn’t go through and someone was waiting for me in the lobby and another person needed me to find a file for them. So, for a few hours everything would be out of control. You can probably tell that I would be worthless at a real high pressure job.

Besides my car I had about 10 other errands to run and when I got home I made Keetha’s Sweet Potato Bundt Cake for the writers meeting tomorrow. I’ll take photos of it later but I think I did good. And the glaze (butter, brown sugar, whipping cream, rum) is so delicious I’m going to lick off the pan when I move the cake to a serving plate. I’ve also made a massive cassoulet and I bought a giant hunk of meat so I can make Amy the Mom’s easy pot roast tomorrow. (Where did I get ideas for cooking before blogs?) And then I’ll be done cooking for the weekend and on Sunday I’ll lounge about on my throne screaming orders.

Tomorrow is also a busy day because we have writers meeting from 11-2 and then at 2 we have a birthday party. [Aside: all my blogging friends are welcome to join writers meeting any time you’re in town. You know, I get enough remarks about this I should probably organize a virtual writers meeting. Hm. Will think about that.] On the birthday: Happy 20th birthday today to Roy Brothers. He’s having cake tomorrow to celebrate. In 4 more years we can take him out drinking.