Lovelihood

More things Seattleites do in the rain: run a 6k race/excuse to drink alcohol in the morning. Well, I at least participated in the running portion of the festivities (entry into the beer garden being severely hampered by kids-in-tow), along with about 13,000 other people. Although, with that many people packed elbow to elbow, "running" is really not a terribly accurate description. Another thing, apparently, at least one Seattleite does, is run the first portion of the race with a Starbucks cup, then gingerly places it (to "grab on the way back") on the concrete barrier separating the two directions of the roadway, which when not functioning as a footpath for a hoard of green-clad fitness/beer nuts, is an arterial highway cutting through town. I made do with water. Chip time: 38:17.

One of the many things that endears me to Seattle: nothing stops for the rain. SFD Station #38 held its Grand Opening this morning, and it seems every pre-teen in its service area showed up. Kids snaked around the station, lined up in the rain to poke at all the gadgetry in a working engine, but stomping around in their galoshes (many of them fire fighter themed) in the meantime. Bear was content to just climb onto the back of the truck and sneak into other parents' shots of their own children playing on the back of a firetruck.

Now, we're not ones for bows and ribbons and frilly lacy things, but Bear's hair has been out of control. She was not, to our great disappointment, blessed with her brother's thick, luscious, wavy locks (where, oh where, did that hair awesomeness come from?). She instead has to contend with my wispy, static-prone , eyelash tickling, massless strands. And not being ones to regularly comb our children's heads, let alone style them, we may have panicked a little in the hair accessory aisle of the store last night, and, in a fit of manic desperation, threw one of every type of hair fastener into the cart. Which is how we came to bring home a bag of bows and ribbons and frilly things, some of which look positively dashing on our little girl. (The picture I wish I'd been able to capture would have happened last night as we unpackaged all the hair-wrangling goodies, and Bear insisted on trying them on. All at once. She made it work.)

Sure, my aesthetic generally leans toward a more modern, stream-lined look. And the recent rise of cool crafty folk and their endless supply of books and magazines and web links pretty much satisfy and inspire my how-to needs. When it comes to the basics, though, things like pillow closures and step-by-steps on a zillion different types of slip covers and reupholstering projects and window treatments, I turn to my personal collection of instructional texts, stocked mostly with finds from the semi-annual Friends of the Library booksale. They bear titles like The Family Creative Workshop, or the Better Homes and Gardens Sewing Book, or my go-to zipper primer The Art of Sewing/Making Home Furnishings. Nothing wrong with a little classical reading. But, I do wonder if a modern instruction could condense steps 14-16 to a more to-the-point "turn pillowcase over." Then again, who am I to complain about wordiness?

Not all projects are created equal. Some days you're on your game, and you can craft up a schedule of hand-painting masks and papier mache-ing baskets and cooking up elaborate pretend meals of vanilla sausages and split pea cookies. On other, less imaginative days, just to fill up time and space, we trot out the craft paints and have our way with the terra cotta SpongeBob chia planter, having long since grown and lost its hair/plant growth.

While we were stringing lights around the Christmas tree, I took our shortest strand and piled it on the deer's antlers. Diligently, we'd reach back behind the cabinet and plug the lights in, and then reach back again at the end of the night to cut the juice, until shortly after the holidays when we gave up on it, telling ourselves we'd reserve deer-lighting for special occasions. The other night we came home from date night (the best Chinese dumplings ever, and a highly-rated but so-so to us movie) and found that the babysitter had deemed it a festive enough night to merit lights. The next morning Mr. New Media dug through his newly organized stash of wires and cables and emerged with a touch switch that now sits atop the cabinet, waiting for wee fingers to tap tap tap the lights on and off. Now, every night can be deerlit.

Kinder Surprise eggs are banned in the US. Something about edibles not containing delightful thumb-sized toys within their confines, a restriction every domestic sugar-cereal producer manages to somehow circumvent. But like affordable prescription drugs and health care, they are available in Canada. And for a hefty shipping fee, you can get a month's worth of eggs in a store-sized display box delivered to your door, discreetly packaged in cardboard brown.