Party party party

As promised, we had belly rubbing:

 Shaun and Brady. Behind Shaun is our life-sized cardboard KISS, a gift several years ago from our friend Johanna. Our decorating theme for the party was "Things Shaun Likes."  Shaun's shirt is from Teenwolf. Of course.

 Tenessa made a beautiful Shaun-shaped cheese ball. Yum.

 Ed surprised us!

 The Johnson sisters. Here we're singing Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."

 Our friends the Runestads, singing "The Gambler."

 Uncle Bill! He sang "Cracklin' Rosie." I love that song.

 Dan & Tenessa sang "Louisiana Woman; Mississippi Man" but applied it to their lives. "Minnesota Woman, North Dakota Man." It was beautiful.

 Carla came down off the stage and worked the crowd.

Brad and my Jess. And my purse.

We didn't have a huge turnout, but it ended up perfect: everyone got to sing several times, with basically no wait, and we could visit and still hear each other sing. Plus, karaoke is just more fun when you know and love every person in the room. It was really, really, really the perfect party for us. Thank you so much to everyone who came, even if you didn't sing.

I'll work on posting at least a partial list of songs performed, after Shaun wakes up from his nap. We're not accustomed to partying like rockstars, apparently.

Last night's party portrait: Skol, pop star!

At the Kjos-Njos Halloween Bash last night, V and I had our portrait taken by Robby, who's, like, a real photographer. (Uncle Shaun has a bad cold, and doesn't feel like dressing up when he's sick, so he stayed home).

As a Viking, I always hoped my daughter would grow up to also be a Viking. Since she aspires to be a popstar, I scowl even more than usual.

I made both of these costumes, completely, with the exception of V's microphone and my helmet, both of which we borrowed from my sister's family. I tell you this not to impress you, but to explain any sloppiness.

(And I know that historically, Vikings didn't really wear horned helmets. But it's the easiest way to identify oneself as a Viking today, so I went with it.)

I'll do a more detailed post on V's costume after tomorrow, when she presents the second version of her pop star self.  Stay tuned!

My blog, my choices.

Yeah, that's right. I changed the background of my blog to look like the background of V's school picture. If you don't like it, get your own blog, and don't do that. But also, I'll probably change it soon enough. Back off, fussybritches.

School Pictures: Kindergarten

Picture Day! I feel old, because when I was in school it was just us and Larry Harrington and that plain blue background. V's got new fangled photos, with about 40 different background choices. We let her pick which one she wanted, and she picked her outfit, too, so it's certainly...distinctive. But look at how cute she is! I can't hardly stand it! And she's so grown up!

I swear my heart grew three sizes when I saw these. Our own kindergartener.



Hey, nice tubes.

I know posting's been light lately, but I have a good excuse. I had surgery. Elective, same-day, drug-me-up-then-send-me-home surgery, but still surgery. A tubal ligation, to be specific. It was this past Friday, and I'm recovering well, though I still feel quite a bit like I've been kicked in the belly by a very angry mule. For those of you unfamiliar with fallopian tubes, I provide this illustration, from the 1918 edition of Gray's Anatomy (which you may have to click on to see, because it's not cooperating with me):

We decided, finally, that V would be our only biological child, and Shaun is not a candidate for a vasectomy, due to his cardiomyopathy, among other fascinating reasons. We could've stayed on the pill, or some variation thereof, but as a woman over 35 with a family history of early massive stroke, I'm not exactly the kind of girl that birth control companies are hoping to reach.

So we have our reasons, and made our choices. I felt surprisingly bad, though, because I have a few people close to me who want very much to become pregnant. It seemed wrong, somehow, to undermine our own (potential) fertility when I have friends and family who so want to experience the very thing I'm trying to avoid. I know, it's not like my fallopian tubes have any impact on their pregnancies, but still. I mean, I know I couldn't do surrogacy, so it wasn't that, but it just seemed cosmically...rude, somehow.

Finally, I realized that, like my Peter Falk Lazy Eye theory, perhaps there's only so much fertility in the universe, and by handing in our fertility card, maybe we could free some up for the rest of the world.  So that's what we've done. May the baby making begin! In other people's uteri, I mean.

Ye Halloween Costumes of Old

You know, it's that time of year again: spookier things than usual show up in the neighbor's yard, my niece resumes her candy corn addiction, and our friend Carla plans a giant pumpkin carving party. As this week's public service Languishing article, I'd like to inspire (or disgust) you with costumes from my past. (In the interest of historical accuracy, these are not in chronological order. I know you folks are into details like that). Enjoy!

• An awesome inflatable head alien that my cousin Nathan had worn a few years earlier. This is the only costume I remember from when I was a kid. It was mid-October, and I didn’t have a costume yet, so I went over to my aunt Beverly’s house to see if she had any ideas. This goofy, inflatable alien head was my favorite in her costume box. It was made out of the same material as a beach ball, and as such wasn’t all that comfortable, but I loved that I had a head on top of my own head. I saw one kind of like this at the thrift store a few weeks ago, and I felt this tug of nostalgia for a plastic hat.

• Saloon Girl: in purple satin with black lace. This was the first major costume I sewed for myself, and I got to use a grommet maker for the corset part. I made the mistake of wearing it to work one year, and discovered it’s just a tad disconcerting to have college freshmen catcalling their English instructor.
• Medusa: I put my hair up and stuck little plastic snakes all over. It made me laugh, anyway, and made for one of my favorite blog post titles.
• Rosie the Riveter: my favorite of all. I found a denim shirt and a red bandana at the thrift store, and made my own backdrop out of yellow, white, and blue poster board. And put a monkey wrench in my pocket, AND I was happy to see you.

Jesus, Supergirl, & Rosie the Riveter walk into a Halloween party...

• Fortuneteller. The go-to easy last-minute costume, from upper elementary until today. A long skirt, a flowy shirt, some shiny earrings, and a Romanian accent, I can offend Gypsies near and far. I've actually been a variation of this costume twice in the last six years. But I wasn’t trying to offend anyone: I was a Fortune Teller. I even studied a little palm reading and tarot. I’m all about authenticity, you know.
• A separated conjoined twin: My friend Bayard and I, who looked nothing alike, except that we’re both white and we both had long brown hair, drew scars on each other’s sides, then pulled down our t-shirts and went out. This was a lovely costume, but it took too long to explain it to the bartenders who kept accusing us of not having costumes.  Later in the evening, when we got separated into different bars, it just got funnier. At least to me.

Consider yourselves inspired. Now I'm off to figure out what I'm doing this year....

Something rancid this way comes

V and I went out of town this weekend after a very busy Friday. We left Shaunsie home alone and had our own adventures, and wandered home yesterday evening. Mondays are one of my days to sleep in, so I didn't really venture into the kitchen until late this morning. And there was a smell. I mean, a Smell. Like a peach sat in a hot car for a few days, and then you put it on a plate in a small, closed, damp room. Only worse.

At first I thought I'd been watching too much CSI. I could hear Nick say  to Warrick (because in my heart, Warrick isn't dead), "You smell that?" and  Warrick raises his handsome eyebrow and knowingly mutters, "Decomp."

So I looked for the body. The three of us were accounted for, thankfully, and Seven was wandering around by my feet. Ah, the fish! Oh, poor fish. Wait, he's not dead. He was just sitting still. I checked the garbage disposal (ick), took out the garbage, opened and closed cupboards and the fridge, trying to figure out 1. what had died here and 2. where it was, exactly. My mind raced: we've never had mice in this house (knock on wood), and I hate mice with a white hot passion. (I may hate mice more than I hate squirrels. No, I only hate mice when they're in houses. I hate squirrels everywhere.) I swept under the stove. No corpse, but I found that old Martha Stewart's Halloween Issue I thought I'd left at Crystal's.

Then I started to get worried. Hallucinations of smells is a sign of a brain tumor, right? I mean if everything starts smelling like pickles, I'm probably gonna die. But this smell was clearly in the kitchen, somewhere between the sink and the trash, and it certainly didn't smell anything like pickles.

Finally, under a cream-colored kitchen towel on the counter above the dishwasher, I found the source. A baggie with just a bit of raw chicken, somehow left behind from Thursday's supper prep, hidden under the towel. Four days on my kitchen counter was plenty of time for terrible things to happen. I was totally relieved, and totally grossed out, and vowed to keep a cleaner kitchen. For now, I've got four scented candles and some incense going on in there, and I'm gonna go eat some pickles.

Tami's Place

My friend Tami is an artist and a mama, a poet and a hairstylist. She co-owned a salon for many years, and works independently in one now. And she's also in the process of setting up her own salon in her house. When Jess and I and V were in the Cities last weekend, we got to be among her first customers.

 I love the black and white floor and the in-progress transformation of a regular basement into a whole new space.

Since it was Jess' birthday, she got the whole color and cut shebang.

 Even V got in on it, getting her hair washed in the fancy sink. When Tami washes your hair, it's like a magical massage for your scalp. Really.

Jess looking beautiful.

At one point, I giggled and said "We're totally playing Beauty Shop!" and we all grinned at one another.  So much girly happiness in one place! 

If you're in or around the Cities and looking for a fabulous stylist, Tami's Place is the place for you. Or at least the place for me.

The First of October

October 1, 1974, I was fourteen months and one week old. Sixty-one weeks, to put it another way. I didn't know what that meant, exactly, until I had my own sixty-one week old child, and suddenly I came to understand my mama in a whole new way. Because when my mama had a sixty-one week old daughter, she brought home a second, brand spankin' new daughter. And oh sweet holy moses that must've been hard.



For me, though, it meant that I would never remember the world before my sister. I will never run out of vintage photos of us together. By the time I could say full sentences, or even walk without a wobble, she was already here.

For me, it means deciding to raise an only child (and I recognize how fortunate we are, to get to make such a choice, and I don't take that fortune lightly) seemed almost unthinkable for many years, because my childhood is so tightly bound to hers. I nearly mourn the baby sister V will never have, largely because I can't picture my life without mine.

We spent this past weekend in Minneapolis, with our mother and her sisters (and their brother), and we got to spend the entirety of her 37th birthday together.

There is no one I would rather near 40 with (well, sixty-one weeks before) than you, Sissy.  Maybe next year we should go to Vegas. Or Sweden. Or at least Hillsboro. Wherever we are, we'll have a good time, so long as we're together.

Doggone it.

These goofy dogs act like litter mates. They're almost exactly the same age (each just over 1 year) and though they have very different personalities, when they're together they just want to tear each other into bits. Figuratively speaking, I mean.

They're so damn cute.

Mask master

Just making two masks is never enough, of course, so I made some more. Then I stuck the kids on a swingset and made them model. The designs are my own, but inspired by lots of online images of animal masks, and by Aunt Shirley's suggestions on the original post.

 Emmy the owl, above, and Emmy the crooked bird, below.

 Will the cat. With a sucker in his mouth. (Yes, the cat is inspired by Peter Criss).

 Will as a burgundy owl.

 Emmy Frankenstein:

 Emmy in action as the cat:

And Will the Triceratops. This was his favorite mask, but it is by far the least ... wearable? Correct? Right? It's just all kittywumpus, but I like it in theory, and the boy likes it in practice.

 A fox mask that I'm particularly proud of.





And the girls, finally, in a cardinal mask and a carnival mask. With suckers.

So we're set for Halloween and then some. Now how do we narrow down the choices?



Rejects from the Annual Christmas Card Photo Shoot

I know that you, like so many Languishing devotees, look forward to our family's holiday card for months every year. And I don't blame you. In fact, here's a little teaser of what might show up if you're a good boy or girl.

Unlike healthy, well-rounded families, we don't actually have an annual Christmas Card Photo Shoot. We just toss the camera to an unsuspecting family member once a year or so and demand they take our picture while Shaun makes faces and rude gestures and the rest of us try to play along.

Above: Shaun in the early stages of making a rude gesture.

 This one coulda been a contender, if it weren't for that pesky, adorable niece. She fits right in, though, doesn't she?

Shaun and Rocket have quite an affinity for one another, but this doesn't really include either V or myself. I'm just enough of a traditionalist to say a holiday photo should include at least 50% of any given family.

That's all I can show you for now. Perhaps I've already revealed too much. Maybe this year we'll go to Wal-Mart and choose a special winter wonderland background for all of us. Maybe.

What constitutes a good holiday photo, in your world?

Longtime friends

In the big city for just under a day this weekend, I got to see some of my dearest friends from college. You know, the kind of friends who were beside you as you figured out who you wanted to be when you grew up; the friends who would help you devour a pint of butterbrickle ice cream because  the dorm fridge would be defrosted over break and who wants to waste an entire pint of butterbrickle? Ah. The friends that just make you happy to be near. I don't see them nearly enough.

 Jeni

 Heather

and Tami Jean. The four of us hadn't all been together since Tami's wedding five years ago. That's just not right.

Jeni's David, above, with their son Christopher and Tami's daughter Holly. Chris adores Holly.

 Holly's impossibly tiny fingers. She's already 3 1/2 months old, and this is the first time I'd met her. She's a delicious cuddle of a girl.

And Holly's big sister, Violet.

So, so glad I got to see these folks. I hope it can happen again very, very soon.

Me and my Lazy Eye

In "Go Carolina," David Sedaris, upon hearing from his speech therapist that his lisp was due to his lazy tongue, describes his reaction.

"My sisters Amy and Gretchen were, at the time, undergoing therapy for their lazy eyes, while my older sister, Lisa, had been born with a lazy leg that had refused to grow at the same rate as its twin. She'd worn a corrective brace for the first two years of her life, and wherever she roamed she left a trail of scratch marks in the soft pine floor. I liked the idea that a part of one's body might be thought of as lazy — not thoughtless or hostile, just unwilling to extend itself for the betterment of the team." (Me Talk Pretty One Day).

In April, then, when I noticed in the mirror that my right eye was a little wonky, I figured it just wasn't playing nicely with the other eye. And then I thought maybe it was because of Peter Falk, known for, among other things, his lack of focused eyes. Since he died this year, I figured the universe needed to balance the number of lazy eyes in the world, so I was selected. (This is how I think, people. If you don't know that by now, you haven't been paying attention). At first I was honored, but then I remembered that Peter Falk's eye wasn't just lazy: it was dead (surgically removed because of childhood cancer). So...um, I don't want a dead eye.

Once I saw it in the mirror (and I looked a lot, because it's really distressing and hard to actually see in a mirror), I noticed I was having difficulty focusing, especially when wearing my glasses, and especially when I was tired. Then I noticed that while driving and wearing my glasses, I had trouble with depth perception (which makes sense, if you think about it: if one eye's looking up Broadway and one is looking across, it's hard to judge how far it is to the crosswalk). I started wearing my contacts more regularly. I thought about getting an eye patch. It made me giggle.

(I look more upset than I really am in this photo: I'm just being silly. It's not a remotely flattering picture, but I don't want you to think I'm just blithering on about nothing. See? I look like Peter Falk. Oh, and it's not usually this bad. Just when I'm tired and not wearing my contacts.)

I went to the optometrist in July, for my yearly check up. I told her I was worried about this wonky eye business, and as she examined me, she kept saying "Huh." Not like "Excuse me, what did you say?" but more like "Huh; that's weird." Now there are many things you don't want professionals to say while they're looking your direction. For example, you hope your dentist doesn't say "Oops" during a root canal; you'd prefer your ob/gyn doesn't say "Sweet holy Moses!" at any point at all....and you don't want your optometrist to say "Huh...." over and over.  It turns out that it's really not normal to develop a lazy eye as an adult. It's almost always a childhood affliction, and important to correct right away as the brain is developing. My old brain is fully developed, though, which is why my focus and depth perception get messed up so easily. And why it surprised Dr. Optomitrist.

Anyhoo, Dr. O sent me to an opthalmologist; Dr. Opthalmologist seemed to think my laziness was unimpressive (which, frankly, was a bit disappointing), and I likely just need to do some exercises of some sort, or perhaps some motivational activities to get the right eye back on board as a team player. To learn those, though, I have to go to an eye muscle specialist (whose fancy title I don't recall). The eye muscle specialist is in high demand, and also not local, apparently, because he's only here one day a month. Which means I can't see him until late November. By then, my right eye could have just migrated right out of my head, for all I know. But I guess we'll wait and see (ha! Vision humor!). I'll keep you posted, even if you don't want me to. Peter Falk would want it this way.

More birthday photos

Below, the hat decorating station (yes, that's a church pew. Yes, in our backyard. Where do you keep your church pew?).

 And here are more shots of my friends and their beautiful children. My sister's a fine photographer, isn't she?

 With such lovely guests, how could it not be a lovely day?