Belly and The Bug: Dan

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Thankful

I have 90 other things I'm supposed to be doing right now: clearing the dishes off the table, folding laundry, cleaning up the kid debris that is all over the floor, making caramelized onion dip, baking pecan pies. And I will do all those things in the next two hours, but first I'm having a teensy glass of wine and writing this here post. Erika, Billy and D will be here in about two hours. Sissy is bringing them from the airport and I think Bri is coming over as well. I want the house to look good, blah, blah. But this is my last 10 minutes of quiet before the holiday officially begins.

I used to be better about the holidays. I absolutely love getting together with everyone and eating and playing games. It's the best! But as I get older, I'm finding that I have less patience for avoidable chaos. I have a harder time just going with it. Maybe it's an age thing or maybe it's because I've got two kids who thrive on structure that has made me way more structured than I ever was before. Whatever it is, I fear I'm getting a little uptight. So I'm focusing on being as easy going as I can be this holiday week. Everyone will have their own plans and agendas and I'm going to do my best to go with the flow. I am going to endeavor to only lay down the law when it comes to my girls and nap times and bed times and stuff like that. Because, my peeps, I need to get over the little things and give thanks for all the things this holiday is bringing my way.

I am fortunate enough to have multitudes of things for which to be thankful, so I'm only going to highlight a few (as I said, there's pie to bake!). And with that, I'm thankful for pie. I am beyond thankful for my tremendous family. We're something of a motley crew (as opposed to Motley Crue - I shared a wink with Tommy Lee once, but he is decidedly not in my family) and I really wouldn't have it any other way. I am thankful that I don't have to work right now and get to spend so much time with my growing daughters. I am thankful that we always have enough food - and it's good, organic stuff. I am thankful we have the Charmer to provide us shelter and warmth. I am thankful for all of my friends (who really fall in that motley family category). And I am thankful to have health insurance, a reliable vehicle, and my Wusthof knives. And also? I'm thankful for you, Internet Friends. I can't tell you how nice it is to have something - this here blog - that is mine all mine. I like writing it. I like hearing from you. It's an entirely good thing. There. Okay. I gotta go. I just heard the dryer stop.

Taste the rainbow

(Note: I have no clue why the font is jacked up in this post... just roll with it and maybe it'll be back to normal next time?)

The past week has been a complete whirlwind. Belly's ear infection really colored everything else, mainly because all she wanted for the first 4 days or so of the ordeal was for me to hold her. Which I did because the poor dear was so miserable. And now my body is paying the price for carrying an at-least-26-pounder around for hours at a time. She's almost better; still more lethargic than usual, but otherwise seemingly fine.

During this time, my brother Jonas and his family came to visit. I don't think I've laid out that family dynamic since we went to Costa Rica, so here it is again. Jonas is my younger brother by 3.5 years. Judy is his fiancee and she has a 6-year-old little sweetie, Lily, from a previous relationship. Jonas has two kids - Zia, 8, and Mikah, 7 - from a previous marriage, as well. The Jonas Family lives in southern Oregon half the year and Costa Rica half the year. It's a pretty swell arrangement. Jonas' ex-wife lives primarily in Costa Rica (on the farm next door), so that works really well when they're all down there in terms of everyone getting to see each other. Anyway... Jonas had Zia and Mikah for about a month and a half and it was time to return them to their mom. The whole gang came up to Portland from southern Oregon. Mom came in and Bri, Sissy and Dan all came over, too. We had a joint birthday party for Lily, Zia and Mikah since we never get to see them on their actual birthdays - cake, ice cream, singing, presents, the works! It was a ton of fun and the kids felt really, really special.

As I alluded to in my last post, I made rainbow birthday cakes. Each kid got their own cake, which looked pretty boring with plain white cream cheese frosting and their first initial in chocolate in the center. Total dullsville...

Magical, relighting candles caused a brief stir and then we were back to just the cakes. But THEN, I cut the cakes and the eyes grew wiiiiiiiiiide with excitement! Lily's reaction was caught on camera...

RAINBOW CAKES! Yes, they are loaded with food coloring which means chemicals which means b-a-d for you, but once in a great while isn't gonna kill anybody. And the delight in those kids' faces was so totally worth it. Plus I told them that I thought they'd be pooping rainbows the next day. Talk about giggles! Here are a few more pictures of those cakes...

I also need to back up a little to the dinner before the cakes. My plan was to make three pizzas and salad - easy peasy. Weeeellll... it turned out to be a major deal trying to get to the store with Belly being sick and all. I gave Sissy my credit card and asked if she would mind going for me. Not only did she not mind, she took Zia and Lily with her! I thought for sure that I would be able to put Belly down to make dinner. Um, yeah, no. The kid was glued to me. Again Sissy stepped up to the plate and she really, really knocked it out of the park. She made all three pizzas (using Mom and Dan as sous chefs as needed) and the salad. So if you need a pinch hitter when making dinner for 14 people, I highly recommend Sissy! (What's with my baseball analogies? Weird.)

Jonas, Judy and Lily had to leave mid-afternoon on Tuesday to get home at a reasonable time but Zia and Mikah's mom wasn't due to get here to pick them up until 9pm or so. I loved having those kids all to myself! We even read the entire first half of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (with me nearly losing my voice). Jonas called when they got home around 8:30pm and said bye to the kids one last time. It tore my heart out. Zia and Mikah both cried on my shoulders when they hung up. I could so clearly remember saying bye to my dad after visiting him when I was a kid and wishing that things were different. And like my parents, Jonas and his ex don't get along so it's always a power struggle with the kids at the center of things. It's such a monumental bummer. Those two are some of the most amazing children I've ever known - fun and cute and smart, yes; but also sensitive and worldly and a-little-too-knowing-for-their-ages. I'm just crazy about them.

This morning we went to a birthday party for the girls' friend, Oliver. He's two. Between that and the birthday party for their cousins earlier in the week, I'd say that I'm in fine shape to host our own 2nd birthday party next weekend. We're going to have a late afternoon costume party. The pizzas we/Sissy made will most likely be duplicated because they were dang tasty (one was fig, prosciutto, balsamic reduction, goat cheese; a white pizza with mozzarella, feta, kalamatas, red onion, artichoke, mushroom; and a green pizza with pesto, spinach, scallions and artichokes). And I got some good ideas for kid entertainment from Ollie's party (sticker and art area, musical instrument area). I won't be repeating the rainbow cakes, though. I'm going to save that for next year or the year after when they might actually remember it.

Yowsers - a week since my last post!

I have sat down to write something about 4 times in the last week, but there simply has never been enough time to complete a post. I just deleted all of my half-starts. Arg.

We went to Mom's for Labor Day weekend - always an adventure! We tried and tried to get out the door on Friday, but it didn't happen until 6:30pm which also happened to be dinner time. And so it was with a heavy heart that I introduced the girls to the saturated-fat-filled world of fast food. We stopped at Burgerville for dinner which was about the best option we had. The girls had a "fish and chips" that was really parmesan-crusted (and deep fried, of course) sole and some sweet potato fries. They loved every second of it. Then they promptly fell asleep as we drove the three hours through the Gorge and high desert to Mom's...in the dark (slightly nerve wracking). Visions of kid's meal toys and chicken nuggets probably danced in their heads.

Mom's was fun. Dan, Bri and Bri's boyfriend all came out for the weekend, too. We ate copious amounts because Mom only knows how to "cook for an army" - bbq ribs, smoked gouda macaroni and cheese, 3 kinds of cobbler, homemade ice cream, fried green tomatoes with gravy, pizza, apple pie, venison stew, etc., etc. Holy shit. It was all so good and so, so, so much.

Belly and the Bug had their first experience feeding chickens. And petting chickens. And nearly getting attacked by chickens wanting MORE BREAD BAAAAWWWWK!!! We've had lengthy discussions about chickens every day since we came home. And deer. Deer wander freely through Mom's town and we saw does and fawns every day. If a girl wanted to see deer and there weren't any in the yard at that precise moment, we'd walk around and always find them in somebody's yard within a two block radius. PLUS there's a creek near Mom's house. The girls had a big ol' time splashing around in it with sticks.

The one thing that wasn't all I had hoped it would be was the climb up Black Butte, just outside of town. We've done this hike before both the hard way - up the front, over the rocks - and the easy way - up the back, along the road. We of course opted for the easy way because we thought the girls would like the adventure. Well, two things didn't really go as planned with that. The first was that the road was steeper than we remembered from back in the day when we were kidless and fancy-free. And the second was that the girls just wanted to be carried aaaalllll the way up and aaaalllll the way down. Nope. No walking for those princesses. AND when we got to the top, it was extremely windy. This meant that the girls just fussed until it was time to go back down. My back still hurts from this misadventure.

Game playing is a must for my family and we played two games that were just AWESOME (courtesy of Dan). The first is called Quiddler. Google it. It's like a cross between Scrabble and Gin. I cannot imagine a better card game. The second is called Revolution! It's filled with back-stabbing fun for the whole family!

We got home Monday afternoon and I immediately started planning for a little soiree I was hosting Tuesday night. A friend of mine is going to Richmond, VA for a couple months and so I planned a "ladies night" at my house as a send-off for her. I had no clue what I was going to make for dinner but I knew I wanted it to be special. I started thinking Asian because it's easy to make and easy to impress people with it, but then one friend said she wanted to bring Brie and bread and another said she wanted to bring a caprese salad using tomatoes and basil from her garden. So...I switched gears and here was my final menu:

Zucchini ribbons with truffle oil and shaved parmesan
Cauliflower soup with Asian pears and creme fraiche
Pizza with figs, prosciutto, goat cheese and a balsamic reduction
Pizza with mascarpone, sauteed shiitake and chanterelle mushrooms with fresh thyme, caramelized onions
Chocolate flourless cake (which I couldn't unstick from the pan, so ended up being kind of brownies)
Plum-creme fraiche sorbet

Plus dishes brought by guests: the Brie and bread, caprese, potato salad and cayenne-chocolate brownies. Plus lots and lots and lots of red wine. It was a FEAST! And it was gooooooood. The fig pizza and the sorbet are now two of my favorite things ever. I will definitely make them again and again and again...when I'm not counting calories, which I have been doing for two days now after nearly a week of massive gluttony and delicious, delicious good times.

So, it's Thursday. Dude is flying to Boston on a red eye Sunday night and not returning until next Thursday afternoon. As luck would have it, his parents are arriving that night around 9pm for four and a half days. This is precisely the time that I should be getting my period, too. I want to get back into the blogging saddle and post every day or every other day, but please bear with me over the next almost two weeks. I might be crazy. I might be a ranting machine. I might be surprisingly calm. It's a total crapshoot.

Season 4, Episode 71

Last night was our monthly Family Game Night with the three of my sibs who live in Portland and might I say, it was one of the best yet! We ordered pizza from Hammy's on Clinton Street and it was awfully good. One was a regular pizza but the other was called "King Earl's Deliverance" with pancetta, sausage, bacon and extra cheese. My GAWD that was good pie. I probably should've washed it down with twelve fish oil capsules and a cup of flax seed powder to counteract its effect on my cholesterol, though.

Have I talked about my cholesterol on here yet? I don't think so. It's elevated. I'm trying to get it down. It's genetic. It's lame. Enough said.

In addition to the pizza, we had planned to pop a bottle of 1983 Bordeaux that I've been carting around for at least a decade. Dan was born in 1983 and this was the first we'd hung out since his birthday a couple weeks ago. This particular bottle of wine was given to me at a wine tasting when I worked at Spago in LA. When I showed it to the sommelier at the time, he told me that it was either going to age very well and be delicious or end up being pretty mediocre - a total crapshoot. I have moved that bottle from Los Angeles to Washington DC to Portland, taking great care to ensure it stayed horizontal. And last night when I took it out of its special box and ceremoniously took off the bubble wrap, it was apparent to all that the bottle's seal had loosened at some point and the wine had leaked a little. Uh-oh. I took off the foil; it crumbled. I pushed the corkscrew into the cork; it was soft like butter. I took a whiff of the wine; it smelled like moldy vinegar. Talk about a disappointment! We cracked open some beers and some other bottles of red wine and let bygones be bygones. Clink! Clink! Let the games begin.

Dude took the girls up for a shower while the rest of us started playing a card game. All of a sudden there was terrible screaming - the kind of screaming a mother never wants to hear. I knew instantly it was the Bug and I ran upstairs as fast as physically possible. I threw open the bathroom door and there was Dude holding both Belly and the Bug. Buggy had her face pressed into Dude's arm. There was a steady stream of dark red blood running from her face down his arm. She had slipped on her way out of the tub and apparently bit her tongue. She was hysterical and wouldn't let us look in her mouth. The amount of blood was truly alarming. I feared the worst, of course - half of her tongue was going to be dangling in her mouth and we were going to have to take her to the emergency room to get it reattached. In my head, I told myself to get it the fuck together because I needed to be strong for my kid. I finally got Buggy to calm down and we looked in her mouth. Everything was attached, but she had a nice gauge from one of her canines. And she had stopped bleeding at that point. It was clear she didn't even need stitches, but what an effing freak out!

Tucking them into bed after that was pretty uneventful. I kissed each of them and said goodnight. As I walked out of their room, I said, "Goodnight, everybody. I love you." And that's when it happened. The Bug said in response, "Lub lu." I froze.

"I love you, Buggy."

"Lub lu."

"I love you, Belly."

"Luv Oo."

They told me they love me!!! THEY TOLD ME THEY LOVE ME! It was amazing. I totally welled up as my heart overflowed a thousand times over. In the span of 20 minutes, I'd had two such opposite extremes of maternal emotion. I headed downstairs and poured myself a biiiiiiiiiiig glass of wine. To quote one of my favorite moments from The West Wing: "Game on, boyfriend." It was time to kick my family's collective ass at cards. I was PUMPED.

Good lord - it's been a week!

I can't believe I haven't written in so long! But even as I start this post, I'm fading quickly. We have been unpacking and unpacking and unpacking. BLAH!!! Things are starting to take shape, though, and I've realized that while we have a lot of STUFF, we don't have a lot of FURNITURE. And the living room really, really needs some. This could prove challenging since Dude is insistent that we get stuff to go with our current couch - which doesn't really go with our new living room AT ALL. We need sorta retro/cool/big set o' stuff. I know that I will prevail (I always do) but our living room is a little echo-y until then. I saw a super cool sofa, chair and ottoman on Craigslist from the 1950s. All together it totals $550 and the upholstery is in great condition. I was all excited to go check it out in person, but then Dude said that he's a little skeeved out even thinking about used fabric furniture. I was all, "Even if it's professionally cleaned?!" And he still said yeah - kinda - maybe - it depends. Anything new that I like is going to be way out of our price range (I'm just that picky) and I don't want to wait forever. What to do? Is it gross to buy used fabric furniture? In a way, I guess it's sort of like buying a used mattress...something I would not do. Hm.

Anyway - my niece D has been here for the past week and it's been AWESOME. She's 15 and incredibly helpful with the girls and genuinely fun to hang with for me. Tonight we had Family Game Night with Mom, her boyfriend, Bri and Dan (Sissy couldn't make it) and we had SO MUCH FUN. D kept cracking me up the whole time we played Apples to Apples (a great game, btw, if you don't know about it). She's going to Mom's house tomorrow, returning Friday for three more days before she goes to see her dad in San Francisco. I'm glad I'll get her back for a few days - I'm going to miss her! Belly and the Bug are going to miss her too. They LOVE having her here. Even Dude has been enjoying her being here (he usually gets over having house guests about 3 days into it).

D and Bri and I went out last night for some drinks at Noble Rot (n/a for the girl, of course) and then to Powell's. I bought a super cool book called My Last Supper. The question was posed to a bunch of kick-ass chefs - "What would be your final meal on earth if you had the choice?" I've played this game many a time when I worked in the restaurant biz, so it was fun to see the answers given by top chefs. I highly recommend it.

This morning, D and I went to Voodoo Doughnuts and got a house-selected sampling of fried goodness and conducted our very own doughnut tasting at home with Dude. I even took notes. Here's what we ate:

1. Maple-Bacon doughnut - long doughnut with maple glaze and two strips of bacon on top. DIVINE!!

"Hello, luscious!" ~ Dude

"Even the bacon itself is really good; perfectly cooked." ~ D

"The perfect combo of sweet and salty and BACON." ~ me

2. Mango-Tango doughnut - mango jelly-filled pastry with mango sugar and white frosting on top.

"A little sweeter than I usually like." ~ Dude

"Not my favorite." ~ D

"The stuff on top is too tart." ~ me

3. McMinnville Cream doughnut - cream-filled with maple frostingf

"Now THAT'S a nice cream doughnut." ~ me

4. Old Dirty Bastard doughnut - doughnut with chocolate frosting, crushed-up Oreos and peanut butter drizzle

"Tastes like a peanut butter cup for sure." ~ Dude

"Fruity. Meaty. I'm just kidding." ~ Dude

"I like this one because it's not sugar frosting-y." ~ D

"It's hard to eat this without a glass of milk." ~ me

5. Marshal Mathers doughnut - small cake doughnut with white frosting and mini m&ms

"Pretty basic. I like that it's small." ~ D

"I agree; the most normal doughnut of them all." ~ me

6. Fruit Loops doughnut - doughnut with white frosting and Fruit Loops

"I really like this one. I like that the Fruit Loops are not super crunchy.

They feel like they've been on top of a doughnut." ~ D

7. Voodoo doughnut - man-shaped pastry with icing face, pretzel stuck in the torso like a voodoo doll and raspberry jelly filling.

"With the chocolate and raspberry - it's really good!" ~ D

Upon seeing the inside: "That's taking doughnuts to a whole new level." ~ Dude

And there you have it. We all loved the maple-bacon the absolute best. It was SO good, people. Here's a picture of D with our bounty before we dug in...

I was in a massive sugar frenzy by the end. The last time I felt like that was when I was planning our wedding and did a cupcake tasting all by myself. Whoa.

What else? I'm sure there's lots more, but it's 12:40am and I must retire. My face is getting closer and closer to the keyboard as I write. I have no doubt the two will connect in the very near future if I don't go to bed. And it's my understanding that drool and computers don't mix. Nighty-night.

Adrift in a sea of boxes

Please pardon the lack of posts lately - my usual nighttime blog time has been filled with unpacking boxes. The girls have not been too keen on giving me the latitude needed to unpack during the day, so I have only a few hours every night to make headway. A lot of headway that simply does not make. BUT - Bri and Dan came over on Sunday and helped me make some progress. PLUS - Bri is coming over tomorrow evening; a friend and her daughter are coming on Thursday during the day to run interference with the girls; and Bri said she'd come hang on Friday during the day since she has a vacation day from work. The unpacking shall get done (whether I like it or not, I suppose).

This house is SO big. I'm used to being able to hear what's happening upstairs while I'm downstairs and vice-versa. That just doesn't happen here. In fact, I keep having to call out to the girls and locate them when we're all on the main level. I'll call, "BUUUUUGGGGGYYYYYYYYY!!!!! BEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYY!!!!!" and I'll hear the patter of little feet in the distance getting closer and closer. Or not - and then I have to run in the kitchen and make sure they haven't somehow figured out how to put each other in the oven (everything else has been baby-proofed). They really are having a big ol' time scampering about. I love seeing them so happy. I can't wait until all of the box-chaos is done and they know where all of their stuff is. For the moment, their toys and books are out in the sun room. I'm also going to give them the bottom level or two of shelves in the library. And Jonas informed me last weekend that he's about to start building a play kitchen for them. I'm going to put it in the eat-in part of the kitchen so they can cook while I cook. How cute will that be??

In other news, Belly had an eye exam today. It was the first she's had since November and obviously the first time she's been to the pediatric ophthalmologist out here. I liked the doctor. He was very gentle and thorough. Belly HATED him...for most of the visit. She seemed to deeply resent the fact that he was all up in her grill and positively screamed with everything she had every single time he tried to examine her eyes. She's such a strong little kid that I couldn't hold her. Dude and I switched spots so he could try to snuggle her/hold her still. It only half worked. Finally, finally, finally she calmed down. Dude sat in the exam chair and held her on his lap facing out. I knelt in front of the chair and hugged her. Dude and The Bug rubbed her back. This was the only way that worked - but it WORKED. She let the doctor do a full exam and by the end of it, she was reaching out to touch his hands and his glasses and was pleasant. Then he gave her a sticker and I think she forgave him completely.

After all of that, there's good news and bad news that will ultimately be good news. The good: Belly doesn't need to wear her glasses anymore. This means the fighting to keep them on her is a thing of the past! How about an amen? Can I get an amen?! AMEN!! And how about a woot?! WOOT!!

Now, the bad that will ultimately be good: She doesn't need the glasses because they're not correcting her crossing. What she needs is surgery - probably within the next six months. I hate to think about my little baby-kid going in to surgery but I like the idea of having the problem FIXED. And putting the whole ordeal behind us. We're going back for a follow-up to today's exam in about a month and we'll get the full story on the surgery then. We understand WHY the surgery, but not the HOW yet. Today was totally traumatic and there was a lot to process, so we just left all the detail questions for next time.

It's a non-stop party here, isn't it?

Anyway - boxes are calling me. More soon.

Examples 698-723 of how things never go according to plan: Part 2

Okay - so we finally made it to Portland. Our plan was to spend the night (Tuesday, 12/16) in our new empty rental house on an air mattress, leaving first thing Wednesday morning to go to my mom's house three hours away. Mom owns a bed & breakfast so I was looking forward to a little extra pampering after the craziness of the air travel. I'm not sure if you followed national weather just before Christmas, but Portland got the Storm of the Century that Tuesday. Snow, snow and more snow fell on our new city (which apparently owns about two snow plows). It was beautiful. And paralyzing. The whole place shut down - including the interstates. We were stuck in Portland and Mom was stuck at her place. The moving company called and said the truck with our stuff would be here on Sunday the 21st. It was kind of fun, though - like camping but with all of the modern conveniences, three bathrooms and a gas fireplace. We just rolled with it because we had time on our side. We weren't supposed to leave for Green Bay (to visit the inlaws) until the morning of 12/23.

Then it snowed more. It was starting to turn into a pain in the ass. Everyone was sold out of snow shovels, ice scrapers, women's snow boots and sleds. Trust me - I looked in vain for those four items all week.

And the moving company called again. Our stuff would be here on 12/22. No - make that 12/23. We were losing our confidence in how on top of it our "move coordinator" really was because she didn't even know the interstates were closed. Having a knack for being able to get to the bottom of anything, Dude discovered that our truck was stuck in Spokane and not moving until the roads cleared. Which would be when??

We realized that it was going to be impossible to go to Wisconsin for Christmas and Dude reluctantly called his parents to break the news. Here's the thing about Dude: he's a total Mama's boy. And he loves tradition. AND his birthday is Christmas Eve. Christmas time at his parents' house is his favorite thing ever and he'd been looking forward to it for over a year. To say he was disappointed is a gross understatement. Also, three of my younger sibs live in Portland. My brother (Dan is 25) is recently married and already had Christmas plans with his wife's family. My two sisters (Sissy is 21 & Brianne is 23) had planned to have Christmas with my mom like they have every year of their lives and were at a complete loss as to what to do since Mom was snowed out of Portland. It was obvious that my duties as a good wife and big sister were cut out for me.

Cue the call from the moving company: our stuff would be here 12/24.

So, Bri came over to babysit while I fulfilled Dude's father's tradition of taking him out for a beer the night before his birthday. It was the first time we'd been out ALONE in...forever maybe?

The morning of Christmas Eve, we were all ready for our stuff to arrive. Dude had spoken to the driver the evening before and he was only about an hour outside Portland. Plus that particular stretch of interstate was open. We seemed to be in the clear! Seemed. The driver called that morning to tell us that the City of Portland still had a chain restriction for all trucks and guess what? He didn't have any chains. Not only that, the company didn't allow him to put chains on the truck. He was 10 miles away with my coffee pot and would remain there until the restriction was lifted - hopefully 12/26. I could not freaking believe it. Could. Not. But what was I going to do? So I got effing festive. I went grocery shopping and stocked up on supplies to create a holiday feast that included (but was certainly not limited to) Mom's shrimp dip for Sissy and some gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free, sesame-free bean dip with gluten-free crackers for Bri. And wine. And egg nog. And soy nog. Plus we got a tree. I learned that you can get a beautiful Christmas tree for only $10 if you wait until the afternoon of Christmas Eve to make the purchase. We decorated it with lights and a shiny little ornament at the top. That night, while Dude, Belly, The Bug, Sissy and Bri were sleeping (they spent the night at our house), Santa even came with stockings for everyone. Seriously, people - I was downright Jolly.

Christmas morning, we opened gifts, played with babies, ate delicious gluten-free waffles and chilled out. The whole day was nice and it was easy to forget all of the craziness of the move - as long as you overlooked that we had a single-sized air mattress as a couch and a lone steak knife as the only sharp knife in the place.

When the truck pulled up out front on the morning of 12/26, I was so happy that I almost kissed the driver. And Mom finally made it in to Portland. THANK GOD THIS ORDEAL WAS OVER.

I have since told Dude that if we ever decide to do anything so stupid as to move across the country again, it will be after we renounce all of our worldly possessions. But I'm pretty sure we will not be moving back to the East Coast anyway (which means you can stay, all my beautiful cookbooks, and you as well, 900 pairs of shoes). Costa Rica on the other hand...

Belly and The Bug