Bigger and smaller revisited

Seattle is selling herself hard.  This summer she charmed me with her lakes.   Now it's the skiing. I went up yesterday morning and skied in the SUNSHINE,  not a single lift line all day, and came home exhausted with enough time to shower and get dressed before picking the kids up from school.  And tomorrow we'll do it again as a family.

My smaller life is getting bigger, in all the right ways.

The red one or the yellow?

In our house we have a technique for making a really tough decision--things like which movie to watch, or which dress to buy.  The important stuff.  You narrow it down to two options (there's a technique to help with that part too, but it's irrelevant right now).  Then, an uninvolved person makes the decision for you.  If you are disappointed about their choice, then you know it was the wrong choice, and you are free to switch.  If you are happy, then you know which one you really wanted.   

Today I took my test.  I felt like it went pretty well.  But when my score popped up on the screen at the end, it said 77.7%.   My heart sank.  Definitely not enough to get into the program.  But then I realized that the 77.7% was the scale of the page, not my test score.  Scroll down, smarty pants.......I got 95%, which ranks me in the 99th percentile.  Which means I should have a good chance at getting in, assuming they accept all my transfer credits, many of which are as old as the dinosaurs.  

I'm feelin' pretty good about it, and I didn't feel good about not having the option.  So the technique works.

Wish me luck...or something.

Tomorrow I have to take the entrance exam for the nursing program I think I want to get into.  If I were to want to get into a nursing program, this is the one I'd want.  And I think I want it.   It's just that life is kind of nice right now and nursing school won't be nice.  

So I've been studying this week for an exam that you can't really study for, to apply for a program I'm not really sure I want to be in.

Getting personal

A fairly new friend of mine posted 25 things about herself on her Facebook page.  One of those things is that her toilets are always gross, even though the rest of her house is, at any point in time, ready for a magazine photo shoot.  (I don't know her well enough yet to know if this is actually the case.)

My house is never at any time ready for a photo shoot.   If there actually were photo shoots for toilets, and I don't know why there would be, my toilets probably wouldn't be ready for them either. 

I just think it's interesting that I can't remember the other 24 things she posted about herself, but the fact that her house is always clean, except for her toilets, has made me feel bad about myself for three days now. 

And yet not so bad that I'm actually motivated to keep my house photo shoot ready.

I wonder what that's about.

There's this woman who comes to my "Extreme Workout" class at the gym.  She just stands motionless whenever the instructor isn't looking, but then starts working out when the instructor turns in her direction.

Maybe it's the same thing.  Something made that woman feel motivated enough to sign up for the class, but not quite motivated enough to actually exercise in it.  I want my house to look like a magazine cover.  I clean and organize and decorate if someone is coming over.  But when they are gone I'm relieved that my kids can get back to creating artwork in accumulated dust on all flat surfaces while the breakfast dishes pile up in the sink.   

Follow up

I'm feeling all mushy because my little imaginative child was in floods of tears this morning about something that happened a year ago.   Mean girls suck.  I dread junior high.  

But now I feel I should clarify...I do not actually think my oldest daughter is weird.  I think she's absolutely adorable and entertaining and spunky and perfect.

When we told the girls we were going to move, Madeline was definitely sad about it, but she was also hopeful that when we moved she'd have a friend who lived close by with "an imagination as good as mine.  Or at least almost as good."  

She's pretty sharp.  I sometimes worry that she'll do the whole birthing imaginary cat thing, or something similar, at school and kids will tease her.  But she doesn't.  She administers "imagination tests" so kids don't think she's "cuckoo."  So she slowly feels kids out as she's getting to know them.   They're willing to play Bella Sara Land (horses)?  Pass level one.  Willing to be a dog?  Pass level two.  Etc.  Pretty smart, I think.

And in eight years, I have never, not even once, not even on a 12 hour car ride, heard that girl say the words "I'm bored."  One time, when she was about 2.5, we were in the car for a while and the whole time she was watching out the window smiling.  I eventually asked her what she was smiling about and she said, "I was just finking about riding on a unicorn and my hair was long and flowing in the wind and so was the unicorn's mane." 

Does it get more adorable than that?

Every family has one

My oldest child is weird. There's really no gentle way to phrase it. Weirdly imaginative? Today she came home from school and talked for 2.5 hours about her imaginary fox. Or was it a cat? Or maybe both? I got confused (okay, I had to tune it out) after a while, because this is not unusual for her. Whatever it was, a fox or a cat, today it was giving birth, and she had to get home in time to help deliver the babies. Oh yeah--I think it was a cat. I'm pretty sure it had kittens.

Then, with that task finished, she said, "Today at school I was happier than a lizard escaping his predator. Wanna know why?" They dissected owl pellets, that's why. And she found "3 skulls, 2 pelvises, some ribs, maybe a leg bone or something, and some vertebrae!"

When she's not assisting in the birth of fox (or cat) babies, she's creating her own alien museum.

In case you can't read it, the piece above is called "Why does the pickle rule me?"

Can't remember what this guy's name is.

And now below, the piece de resistance: "Cyclopes rules them all." Please note his importance is reflected in the pedestal and glass case surrounding him.

Double your pleasure, double the fun

We hit Pike's Place twice this week with Mom and Jodi.  I took them while the girls were in school on Friday, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves...for good reason.  It was COLD.  

On Saturday the sun came out and we (along with the rest of Seattle) decided to crawl out of our caves and soak up some Vitamin D.  

We went back to Pike's with Kolby and the girls and bought all the fixings for a yummy dinner at home:  fresh salmon, scallops, hedgehog mushrooms, pasta, and a chewy baguette.   It was fun to be the source of all the hollerin'  and fish throwing at the fishmonger stand. 

I never get tired of Pike's Place.  So much to see, people to watch, food to eat, pictures to take.  

We also ventured down to Post Alley to see Seattle's finest:  the Wall of Gum.  Madeline chewed her gum far past it's prime so she could contribute to this incredible art installation.  

 The dinner Kolby made for us with all our Pike's Place finds was so amazing!   Gum for dessert.