Zeno's Bar & Grill

I had a zillion New Year's Resolutions this year, but I've recently achieved one that was near and dear to my heart--not to mention a seriously long shot...or so I thought. It was to run a 5K distance at 8 min/mile pace, and I feel safe saying it's true after doing it twice now (always a scientist to the end.) The first time it happened, I had a sneaking suspicion the clock was wrong! I've been running our local summer race series, which is every Wednesday down by the beach.

On our way to walk my son to the bus stop today my daughter cried out, "Look Mommy, a mouse, or a rat or something!" I told her to back away from it as I ran to catch up and see the poor baby opossum shivering on the sidewalk. I scooped it up into a towel in a box and the opossum snuggled in. I was in love.

A check on Google however told me that baby possums don't create their own body heat and need to be manually stimulated to go to the bathroom. This was enough to evaporate dreams of caring for the cute little guy myself. So I called my vet who recommended Flint Creek Wildlife Rescue. They directed us to their Chicago location and the lady their gave him some fluid and put him in an incubator. After a few weeks when he is stronger they'll release him into the woods.

--Kelly

It was a busy weekend chez Melanie et Kelly. While Melanie was corralling 9 girls into sleeping bags, my girl was going through her own right of passage - getting her ears pierced. We got them done at Little Girl Nirvana aka Claire's Boutique (where my husband also had his ear done, but that is another story). She was incredibly brave and they do both ears at the same time.

In other "my youngest is growing up way too fast" news, she has also learned how to ride her two-wheeler sans training wheels. She just came up to us and said I think I can do it now, we took off the wheels and sure enough she was able to do it.

Okay, I think we're all set until driving lessons begin!

--Kelly

This weekend, I summitted yet another parenting mountain. It was challenging, yes. It required an entire team of sherpas to haul all of the necessary items. And, at times, I felt woozy from the oxygen deprivation. That's right, I hosted my first girls' slumber party chez moi!

The occasion was my oldest daughter's ninth birthday, and she invited six friends. Together with my three girls, that made for quite a full house, but we pushed all the living room furniture to the walls and turned it into a slumber paradise. Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, and they were asleep by 12:30, so that was good. I think it helped that we kept them busy. We made hand-cranked ice cream, had a treasure hunt, and the girls designed their own pillowcases with fabric markers and glitzy iron-ons, which they then autographed for each other. I felt like a PM (Perfect Mom^TM) for sure. Oh, yeah, except for the part where I flipped out when my husband decided to patch and repaint the front porch...30 minutes before the guests were supposed to be arriving. Um, yeah. Sometimes I think he missed the common sense gene.

The piece de resistance (if I do say so myself) was the birthday cake. Even though it didn't exactly look like a professional cake, the kids loved it. I got the idea from the internet and made this cake that looks like five little slumbering party girls (with their bodies made out of Twinkies.) Actually, purchasing my first box of Twinkies was another parenting landmark, but that's another story!

Proving my theory (see below) about Feist being the new Muzak, another data point: Urban Outfitters, Friday morning, 10 AM. I love being proven right!
--Melanie

Things look much better now. My Dad was on a regular hospital ward as of yesterday, and they're expecting to send him home in the next few days. What a scare, but it seems like everything is going to work out fine in the end...

--Melanie

Asking for lots of good thoughts going out to my Dad, who had a health scare that landed him in the E.R. today. He was in stable condition when my mom emailed earlier, so I am grateful for that. The whole thing was a real shock. My parents have always been a lot younger than my friends' parents, so I never think of them as being anything other than totally young, healthy and just generally superhuman. I mean, they're my Mom and Dad, they're invincible. I am just glad that he got prompt and high quality medical attention so that things could be stabilized before they got worse.

Love you, Dad! I hope you will be back home and surfing the web soon (besides being my Dad, he is also my all-time favorite blog visitor) We will be serving you the drink of your choice at Zeno's just as soon as your doctor gives the okay.

Love,
Melbo

I made it safely back from my Portland trip with nary a scratch and the worst thing to happen was an hour delay on the return flight. And don't think that it is a co-ink-ee-dink that Melanie was also travelling via the friendly skies yesterday. That's right - it was the reunion of Isabella Penn. More on our joint adventures later, but I'll recount my solo escapades.

It was a very adult weekend. Upon landing, my brother picked me up and after a yummy Mexican lunch complete with Margaritas, we went to Multnomah Falls. It was so incredibly beautiful that I agreed to hike to the top. After all it was only a mile. Well, let me just say that a mile entirely up hill is quite a different experience from walking a mile around flat flat Illinois. The view from the top wasn't quite worth it, but it did feel like a bit of an accomplishment. And I was able to do it without having to also carry my daughter who I'm sure would have been clamoring, "Uppy!" less than a tenth of the way up. Had that happened I could have pointed out to her the woman who was walking her kitten (that's right a kitten in a little harnass with a leash).

The next day my brother and I drove to Tacoma to see his exhibit. It was like entering a Salvador Dali painting to see my brother's name up on a plaque in a museum. And it was even more fun watching people watch his piece.

Saturday evening we went to the Portland Baroque Orchestra. It was my first time watching live classiscal music and I was blown away by how fantastic it was. Going to the symphony will definitely be in in my future.

My trip ended with Mack showing me where he works and seeing some exhibits at the PNCA.

The trip was definitly worth every minute of angst that I suffered for it and I plan on doing it again.

--Kelly

Just back from a trip to my old college stomping grounds, and while there, I picked up one of their signature tee shirts, which includes the old, classic slogan "Communism, Atheism, Free Love"--the hippie radical charm is undeniable, no? And perfectly harmless, right? Especially on someone who is plainly a suburban mom and definitely not a commie.

You know you're a mom when...

1. Full of mental distress or uneasiness because of fear of danger or misfortune; greatly worried

2. earnestly desirous; eager

Tomorrow morning I'm going to do something that I haven't attempted in over seven years - get on a plane by myself. I'm going away for approximately 58 hours, in other words a weekend. On one hand I feel really excited - imagine a plane ride where I can read a book other than The Magic Treehouse. Long, luxurious, breakfasts, lunches, dinners. Sleeping past 6am! No one to worry about except myself!

This is where things dip perilously into the first definition. I'm not as worried about my kids. My husband is very competent and everything on the home front will be perfectly fine. I worried about me. Dying. And please don't offer me the platitude that it is safer to fly in a plane than to drive in a car, because this trip will involve some driving as well.

The thought of my children being motherless is perhaps my greatest fear. Maybe it's because I lost my own mother (twice, in different ways) at such a young age that's done it to me.

Okay, enough of these morbid thoughts. I have a hard time writing about that and this probably is not the proper forum. Besides, I have 24 hours to get through and breakfast to make, so I will focus on the positive and write all about my (hopefully tame) adventures when I return.

--Kelly

What do Valerie Bertinelli, plastic bags and a pedometer have in common? They are all my latest obsessions. I'm not turning into a celebrity stalker, I promise. It's just that Valerie's new promos for Jenny Craig are so...so...I don't know...but I'm obsessed with them. It practically makes me want to join Jenny Craig, even though I'm not trying to lose weight (although maybe I should be!) I loved Valerie on One Day at a Time in the seventies, and I guess I'm not over her yet.

Labels: celeb obsessed, suburban mom

Besides various Seussisms (see below) these are the other words that are echoing in my brain after this weekend. My husband and I went to Art Chicago, a huge contemporary art fair held in the Merchandise Mart. (The building by the way is huge. How huge? Big enough for its own zip code.) There were so many incredible pieces of work like the ones from Nicole Cohen, Patrick Hughes, and James Martin's photographs of marble quarries. The most amazing thing however, was when speaking to a gallery owner from Seattle I mentioned that my brother was showing a piece at the Tacoma Art Museum's Northwest Biennial. He asked for my brother's name. Upon hearing, "Mack McFarland", he replied, "Oh, the video guy?"

--Kelly