Not Yet

Do you ever get impatient with your kids? I don't mean in the "will you please finish your dinner??" sense - I'm thinking of waiting for them to achieve a milestone. I had a reminder today that I need to appreciate the season we're in without trying to push my kids to be older than they are.

Sometimes when I'm out with the boys and we're having fun, I think to myself, oh, we should stop at a coffee shop and get a little treat. I imagine us all sitting around a table together, nibbling on something sweet, and having good conversations about life. Obviously, that last part should have clued me in because the boys are just now starting to string three words together ("Mommy help me," Gus said at lunch today when he wanted me to feed him Cheerios. Yes, Cheerios for lunch. We are in a major breakfast-for-every-meal phase over here lately.)

This morning, we were walking home from our weekly free entertainment at a nearby mall. We'd had a good time giggling and dancing at the puppet show, and the boys seemed to be in a good mood. So I thought, hey, let's stop at Starbucks! (I was also motivated by the fact that I hadn't finished my morning coffee at home...)

First, the boys were excited to look at the display board outside with all the flavors of hot chocolate. (They thought they were cookies.) Then, when we went in, they said, "Wow!" I guess they were impressed by their first visit to Starbucks! They quickly started grabbing armfuls of biscotti off the counter and running around the cafe. Using my best calm-yet-authoritative mother voice, I said, "Boys, come here and stand by me." They scampered over. Phew! As I ordered my latte, I returned the biscotti to their shelf and picked out more kid-friendly cookies, chocolate dipped madelines. 

We took our treats outside (because it was 70 degrees, oh yeah, SoCal!) and sat around a table. They happily munched their cookies for about 2 minutes. I snapped some photos. Then the scene descended into CHAOS! Gus only ate the chocolate half of his cookie, then asked for more. Silly Mom, I had picked a package with three cookies. I told them they could share the last one. That was the WRONG ANSWER! They started screaming NO NO NO! as I broke the cookie and it came apart in four pieces. Huge tears! Gus reluctantly grabbed a piece with chocolate, but he wouldn't eat the plain parts. Gibson gobbled up the remaining 3/4 of the extra cookie, plus the original 1/2 that Gus refused to eat. So Gus was even MORE mad when he saw Gibson was still eating cookie while he had none. 

The only other snacks I had with me were Goldfish crackers. The kids informed me that those were NOT an acceptable alternative. At this point I'd had maybe one sip of my coffee, but it was obviously time to go home. I told the boys to go get in the wagon. Gus jumped down from his seat saying "button!" I thought he was going to go play with the donate-your-change-to-help-the-homeless meter next to our table, so I said ok and turned my attention to helping Gibson wipe up. Next thing I know, Gus had run over to the crosswalk and was yelling "Button! Button!" because obviously that's what he was talking about. "Gus!" I yelled. "Get back here!" A pedestrian looked on and probably wondered if he should stop this two year old from crossing the street by himself.

I got Gibson down from the chair and ran to grab Gus. Of course, the wagon was around the corner of the store, so I had to retrieve it. Gibson came with me. Gus stood by the window pointing inside exclaiming "Cookie! More cookie!" I got them both in the wagon and started heading home. We'd gone about half a block when I heard some unhappy squeals behind me. I turned to see Gus laying on top of Gibson, possibly chewing on him, while they both were hanging over the side of the wagon. An older gentleman passing by helpfully pointed out, "Hey, they're going to fall out." I ignored him and said to the boys in a less-than-calm-and-quite-authoritative mother voice, "Cut it out!"

We managed to get home with all our limbs intact. Then I gave them popsicles to eat on the balcony (because I'm sure more sugar will solve their problems...) while I finished my latte in relative peace.

In conclusion, I think I'll wait on my little dream of hanging out at a coffee shop with my kids until they are, hmm, at least 5 years old. Or maybe younger if I just have one of them with me!

What I Like(d) About Seattle

Since I gave Memphis a shout-out last week, I figured I'd note some of the things I liked about living in Seattle. I lived there two different times from the late 90s till we moved south two years ago.

Greenery
The PNW is full of evergreen trees so no matter the season, it's always green somewhere. Winter is especially green as a layer of moss starts to grow on damp surfaces like sidewalks. I didn't appreciate the greenery until I lived in DC for a few years where everything dies in the winter.

"Green"-ness
Seattle is an eco-friendly city. Recycling is required by law! Restaurants have to use compostable to-go containers (no styrofoam!), and people in general are into reducing and reusing as well.

Diversity
It seemed like there were people from nearly every country who called the Seattle area home. It's a big area for refugee resettlement, in addition to being an immigration magnet for jobs because of the tech industry. The city has as Asian influence that I definitely miss. I feel like I hardly ever even see Asian people in Memphis.

Food and Drink
Just a few of the things I miss include: Ivar's salmon and chips, good teriyaki (made with that thick, syrupy sauce), Hawaiian food, coffee snobbery being a common and accepted way of life, Mac & Jack's African Amber, and wineries nearby.

Landscape
I love that you can see the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges from Seattle. I can still picture driving west on 50th Ave with the Olympics in front of me and the Cascades in my rearview mirror...ahh, so glorious. One of my favorite views in the city is at Sunset Hill Park. If I had millions of dollars, I would totally buy a view house in that neighborhood.


File under: NaBloPoMo Day 24

Back in the Glory Days

My family likes to talk about, "back in the glory days," but you have to imagine it being said in an old-man voice, like, "baaack in the GLORY days, when I was a young whipper snapper..." It started because my dad, a middle school track coach, kept bringing up stories of particularly amazing athletes he'd coached back in the day.

If I had to define a period as my glory days, I'd peg the years immediately following college as among the most memorable. I was working in customer service for a small start-up "hippie" coffee company in Seattle. One of the perks of the job was drinking as much coffee as I wanted all day long. Sometimes we had new product sample time in the afternoon, which meant I spent the night overly caffeinated and staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

More that just the buzz of beans, though, was the rush I got from feeling like I was doing something that mattered. Our products were Fair Trade, Organic, and Shade Grown, so I felt like I wasn't exploiting anyone. The company was set up in a sort of Newman's Own model whereby profits were generated to fund programs for at-risk children in coffee-growing countries. When I got out of bed in the morning, I was firmly convinced of the rightness of our cause and motivated to do my best at work. (As an aside, the business model didn't actually work all that great, in part, because the specialty coffee industry is a highly competitive marketplace, but I didn't really understand that at the time.)

Our office was in a warehouse in Seattle's SoDo neighborhood, literally one block away from Starbucks headquarters. (I called them the "evil empire" yet often walked across the street to enjoy lunch in their cafeteria without a hint of irony.) We built cubicles for ourselves out of old wooden pallets covered with brightly painted corrugated tin. Our building was quite close to the railroad tracks, so our cube walls rattled noisily whenever a train rolled by. Burlap coffee sacks also served a major role in our decor, as did pennants of all the colleges who signed up as customers.

As a young idealist, I found our staff meetings particularly inspiring. They were a great blend of humor and motivation, the latter being doled out by the company's president who really had a vision for what we were trying to do. I was the youngest employee and perhaps particularly predisposed to be fired up, since I'd just returned from studying abroad in Central America the semester before I started working there.

Outside of work hours, most of the employees enjoyed socializing together as well, hitting up local happy hours frequently. My coworkers introduced me to the culinary delights of Salty's and Ray's, and the joy of drinking good beer and wine in general. In the summer, our boss took us all to his cabin up on an island in the Puget Sound for a weekend-long retreat that can best be described as awesome.

The nice thing about glory days is that you mainly remember the good times. Sure, if I try, I can think of a couple negatives from that time period, but by and large I have rosy memories. I'm glad I enjoyed myself then since I didn't really know I was living in my glory days until after they were over.

File under: NaBloPoMo Day 13