Foul play

I'm exhausted. The last of the 25 guests who rolled through our mountain house to celebrate Thanksgiving with us have just left. Makena is asleep, the kitchen is trashed, and Tiger is collapsed on the couch with a rawhide hanging out his mouth and bloated with gas from having been fed too many scraps.

If you are wondering where Jack and daddy are, they are in town in a clean house, asleep, and getting ready for school and work tomorrow. I've stayed back a couple of days, to put the house back together and await new appliances (pictured,) especially, the new dishwasher. The old one broke the day before T-day and was repaired -- with a lot of begging on my part -- but ultimately, I was told that it wouldn't last ten more washes.


I did two sacrilegious things this year to mark Makena's first Thanksgiving with us: I ordered an "already cooked" Turkey AND a half-gallon of gravy. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE to cook, I'm the type of person who gets excited when she opens a set of Le Creuset pots or stainless steel mixing bowls for Christmas. My idea of a good souvenir is to come back with a cookbook from the places I visit (which reminds me that I didn't get one in China!) I love food. I love Iron Chef --my sister, on the other hand, would use those gifts as a weapon and clobber you over the head with them for even thinking about getting her that, but I digress...

I've never committed high culinary treason before --I've also never had two children or twelve guests (plus three extra dogs) spend three days with us-- so ordering the bird made sense at the time. And, I'll be honest, I wasn't sure that my first husband would pull off frying the turkey (at altitude), so I wanted to be safe. I say "first" husband because he was deservedly insulted by my lack of faith in his frying abilities and gasped when he found out that I couldn't even own up to the gravy.

Well guess who ate crow? Moi. Not only did his, not one but two, fried turkeys come out perfectly cooked and delicious but my overpriced bird was RAW. Sure, it looked golden and mouth-watering on the outside, on the inside it, was uncooked and cold. There was a collective gasp from the crowd and they sort of looked at me with pity. I even tried a bite of "sushi turkey" hoping against hope that it wasn't as bad as it looked. Adding further insult to injury, the yam risotto that I had proudly prepared before coming up (to save myself the trouble of cooking in the mountains) was still frozen! I was 0 for 3. Thankfully, since the rest of our friends were serious foodies, there was no shortage of amazing side dishes or dessert (a special golf-clap to Tamara for her Yam pie with caramelized Cabernet sauce and whipped cream.)

Jack stuck to the turkey and freshly baked pumpkin bread (not made by me, of course) and the only one who actually ventured to eat my, subsequently defrosted and disastrously microwaved, risotto was Makena (who thankfully didn't throw it up.)



Our place was a revolving door with groups of friends arriving as others left and it was fantastic -- all be it exhausting. Although Makena handled it all beautifully by day, by night, it was awful. I realized too late in the game that all the festivities (and three new dogs in the house) had her overly stimulated to the point where she couldn't sleep. I spent two entire nights with her sprawled across my chest in an effort to help her. But the only angle that was acceptable to her was upright. So I contorted myself in an armchair and pretended I was on the flight back from Guangzhou and that I could do this. I could find that zen place between delirium and nervous breakdown and make it through the night. Thankfully one of my girlfriends handled making breakfast for everyone on those two days and Makena and I got to sleep in. Tragically. I didn't pack my make-up so I could have looked better.

I wouldn't change a thing about the weekend (except to have my concealer on hand and maybe serve everything on paper plates so that I wouldn't spend so much time washing dishes.) I want Makena to be able to hang with us when we have large groups of friends around -- as Jack does -- and I am thankful that she doesn't seem to have held these disruptions against me. I'm thankful for Makena and Jack's brilliant personalities and extremely thankful that I wasn't served divorce papers for dessert -- although I have been suspended from cooking duties for next year's meal.

In the meantime, I plan on having a serious word with the grocer who sold me the raw Tom Turkey because I suspect that was foul play!

Is - on a diet.
PS Makena spent a great part of the weekend chasing, Earl, our friend's hairless chihuahua (pictured above.) Makena's friend Josie had a bublebath together. Last, our friend Tony also helped her ride a skateboard for the first time. Look for Makena in the XGames of 2017.

Shoot first, ask questions later

What do you call the person who packs up her two kids on the spur of the moment, takes a couple of carry-on, and flies to Seattle for three days? My husband called me his "frontier woman" as he loaded us into to the car for the drive to the airport. That was me, Is-a-crazy, flying solo last weekend.

My oldest girlfriend, who I have known since I was nine years old (she shares the title with her sister,) was going to be in Seattle to do the interior design of a private jet for some billionaire who lives up there. She hadn't met Makena and I didn't know when I would be going to Montreal, so since we were on the same coast and I was suffering from writer's block, I decided to shake things up and take the bull by the horns and I quickly booked myself on a super cheap-non-refundable-no matter-what Expedia package so that she could meet the baby and have a visit with Jack. Seattle also happened to be where another family, we traveled to China to adopt with, happened to live so it all seemed like a reasonable adventure and meant to be. I'd kill two birds with one stone: reunite Makena with one of her China cousins and have her meet my jet-setting friend.

If I had paid closer attention to the Weather channel and noticed that they were having record-breaking rain storms and cataclysmic floods up there, I may have hesitated. If I had been told that trying to get my rental car at nine-thirty on a Saturday night would turn into a two hour fiasco as I dragged luggage and pushed a stroller with a crying baby and a sleep-walking eight year old up in the elevator and across the sky bridge, into the parking lot and back to the airport terminal THREE TIMES because every direction I was given was wrong! Only to finally make it to the airport car rental site and discover that it was closed and reading a notice that told me to grab a shuttle and head to Timbuktu to pick up my vehicle -- To finally get there and be told that all the computers were down and that they were unable to verify my reservation... To finally get the car and to have to drive exhausted into an unfamiliar city -- in a rain storm -- because it only started to rain the minute I got in the car -- I may have stayed home!

Nevertheless, around the stroke of midnight, we made it in one piece and the hotel was extremely accommodating. When they rolled the crib into the room, I had flashbacks of Chongqing just before we got Makena and I wondered how the baby would deal with everything when she woke up and found herself in a strange bed, in a hotel room, and what impact that might have on her. Jack mumbled something about "room service" pancakes and bacon before passing out and I fell asleep watching an episode of "Flip that House," a remodeling show full of insane people with dubious decorating and remodeling tastes.

Sunday was great. Our China friends and my girlfriend met us at the hotel and we walked to the public market in the rain and ate lunch and then strolled to the aquarium. I worried that Jack would complain about all the walking but I slipped him a twenty (for hardly complaining at the airport) and he spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out how to spend it. Finally settling on a stuffed Ecoli virus toy. It was a toss up between the Ebola and polio ones but the fringe is what finally sold him. Besides, with all the Spinach fiasco, Ecoli was on his mind.



Monday was spent visiting the Space needle and the science museum and Mak and Jack were total troopers. The flight home was uneventful and the crowning glory was Makena returning home, seeing Tiger and her bedroom, and breaking out into this huge smile followed by a twelve hour sleep through the night!

Yeah! I'm so glad I shot first and asked questions later. We had the best time.

Is - a- loving Seattle.

The 200 year old man

My husband loves breakfast at any time of the day, so when I asked him what he wanted for his birthday dinner the answer came as no surprise. I tried to think of various places that serve breakfast all day -- Denny's came to mind -- but I decided that Nate 'n Al's, a deli in Beverly Hills, would be more fun and would offer those who didn't care to have eggs for dinner a greater range of choices. I spoke to the (young) assistant of one of our guests to give him the directions and details for the soiree and he was speechless. He was stunned that I would host a dinner at a deli and not follow it up with a round of drinks at a bar or some dancing. Yeah, well that's happens when you suddenly have 2 kids and the big "45" is in your rear-view mirror and you don't want to cook and scrape pancake batter off the kitchen counter, let alone your hair. The small group who attended were amused and thought the whole thing was cool and original.

The evening was a hoot and the bonus: A celebrity sighting of Larry King eating his dinner. I told everyone who would listen that "this was a birthday fit for a king." I had the waitress put the number "200" on the apple pie (my better half does not like cake) -- thinking I was being clever ala "Mel Brooks, the 200 year old man." Except, in typical Isabelle malapropism fashion, I was off by a couple of thousand years, 'cause it's the Two Thousand Year Old Man and hubby wasn't as amused by my cleverness, as I was.







Mak and Jack were in attendance and carried themselves extremely well, or so I thought. I gave Jack the camera to let him take pictures (and to keep him from complaining that he was the only kid there) and I was shocked to see the framing on some of his shots after we got home. Should I be worried?


Happy Birthday, dude.

Is - a - young at heart.

PS Those aren't my boobs. Consider the picture a gift.

I interrupt this bulletin

I interrupt the usual blogging about my children to remind my dad (pictured with me when I was two) and my sister that, not only did I have a birthday a few days ago, but that I also celebrated my fourteen-year wedding anniversary (a longevity feat by California standards) and that unless the phone lines were down and are still down, I'm wondering why I didn't get a phone call? I don't need gifts. And I understand the concept of saving trees, so I can do without a card, but an e-mail or a message on my voice-mail would have been nice.

And people wonder why I have a birthday complex when it comes to my kids.


Is - getting older by the day

PS this is what happens when your family become blog lurkers.

Halloween

How many elementary school principals, do you know, have to write an open letter to the parents of his students asking them to disguise themselves "appropriately" for the Halloween parade? Ours did, because one too many moms in recent years have shown up on the playground dressed as hookers or sexy she-devils, wearing too revealing an outfit (thinking they are so daring and creative) and he's trying to put a stop to it. Why? Because the audience is fifteen years too young for this kind of exposure! Hello? Don't get me wrong, I love a good party and I don't consider myself a prude but I was shocked when I read the flyer that came home in Jack's folder. Then, I was stunned when I read the next one: "hand out Granola bars and mini carrots instead of chocolates so that we can be "healthy." In retrospect, I can see how the principal was trying to cover our mental health as well as our physical health in those bulletins. Something for everyone, just pick and chose.

Nevertheless, Halloween was a blast this year. Jack and I invited a dozen of his friends and their parents over for a bucket of the "Colonel's best" and some refreshments to kick off the "Trick or Treat through the neighborhood walk". Poor dad could not be with us. He was stuck at a Rolling Stones concert in New York and had to miss out on all the fun and excitement.

We live at one end of this almost rural neighborhood and nobody ever pays us a visit on Halloween, so we've started this tradition of having a few people over for a bite to eat before they go out -- I figure that nothing goes better with candy and chocolate than a bit of grease and maybe a glass of Chardonnay, to put you in a festive mood. So, just after it got dark, we pulled out the lanterns and the plastic to-go cups and chaperoned the kids to the street where all the action happens when it comes to the spectacle of Halloween. We're talking decapitated heads, mummies walking the streets, haunting projections on the sides of houses, women who may have had too much plastic surgery -- you name it - - a very ghoulish experience for the faint of heart.

Jack went as a werewolf. I slapped together his disguise by cutting the horse head off a costume that was too small for him and sticking a werewolf mask over it. The only drawback was Jack's size. I wanted to paint his hands and feet blood red, to compensate, but he wouldn't let me. Then, he insisted on wearing socks with his sandals. Ergo, the photo you see. Scary from the waist up, scarier from the knees down.

Jack insisted that Makena wear the bat costume he wore for his first Halloween (one of the few baby items of his that I have kept) and by some miracle, related to her tiny size, it fit. I managed to snap a shot of her dressed as a bat in front of her Fisher Price house (talk about musical nightmare) and had I had Jack's photo of him wearing it on disc, I would have posted it as well.

I, on the other hand, ended up slapping the cut-off horse head from Jack's old costume on my head and pretending to be the decapitated horse from the Godfather movie. I would post the photo but I'm way too vain. Now, had my husband been in town. I probably would have dressed as Superwoman. I love those red boots!

Yeah, right.

Isabelle