Deception Pass

 

Wednesday 8/5/09

 

After a late start we got on the road for a day trip to Deception Pass State Park.  We chose a northern destination because we had to drop off The Mother-In-Law’s surger at the old school sewing machine repair shop at 200th and Aurora.  There were some beautiful old singer treadle sewing machines there.

 

Then, on the road for a long drive.  My city kid continues to be amazed that she falls asleep every time we buckle into a car and go for a long drive.

 

Driving North on I-5 from Seattle brought back so many memories, Annex Retreats, trips to Port Townsend and Orcas Island, that school show job I had touring elementary schools of the I-5 corridor in the utility company musical.

 

I remember going through Deception Pass on the Spirit of Discovery.   The CSR’s had just finished setting the table for lunch and the boat hit a whirlpool just right and tipped sideways enough for all the dishes and glasses to slide off the fully set tables.  

 

My Kid played in the sand at Admiralty Inlet while I felt a little sentimental and sad.  Why did I ever stop working on the boats that went up and down the Inside Passage?  What was I thinking?

 

There was to be an alternate life in Seattle where car trips and outdoor activities are almost effortless.  Oh well.

 

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant in Mount Vernon and then drove home under one of the most beautiful full moons I have ever seen.


old friends and new creative work

8/4/09

 

The highlight of the day fro My Kid and The Mother-In-Law was lunch at the Rainforest Cafe in Southcenter Mall which has been inexplicably renamed “Westfield”.  As an aspiring downtown Seattle creative person I never went to that mall.  Then when we got pregnant and had a baby we started to go there frequently because of the nearby Babies R Us.

 

The Rainforest Cafe, impressed my kid to the point that it is now her second favorite restaurant after Dave and Busters (beating out Bubba Gump Shrimp).  The drinks were too sweet and the food too heavy.  But hey there were anamatronic monkeys, elephants and snakes, with live sharks in the saltwater fish tanks.  And the dessert brownie volcano was topped with a lit sparkler!  Other than that the mall was a bad mall according to My Kid did not get anything.  She couldn’t  even any clip-on earrings at Claires, her favorite mall store.  I looked at handbags, but I did not buy one.  She was upset that they were all over $100 and therefore not anything she could expect to get so she stopped enjoying the mall.  The only person who got anything at all was The Husband who purchased a much needed pair of casual sneakers to wear during the rest of the vacation.  And it must be remembered, My Kid did get the giant special frog-head glass with a toy in the bottom compartment at the Rainforest Cafe so it wasn’t like she was leaving completely empty handed.  But, her emotional state may have been entirely unrelated to the mall experience.  In the car her child’s piped up from the back seat asking if this was Tuesday:  

 

“Today is Eliza’s birthday and today is the day I’ll never see Mutessi ever again.”  

 

She was thinking about neighborhood friends back in Brooklyn,  one lives on our block, the other is moving to Uganda.

 

Because My Kid’s dark mood plans were changed and I hoped out of the car alone at the Northwest Film Forum while The Husband took My Kid and The Mother-In-Law to Uwagimaya to look for novelty erasers and snacks.  Then back to her apartment to make small repairs while I watched the evening of short films about water commissioned by the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs with Seattle Public Utilities;


  “The projects reflect SPU’s management of the complete cycle of hydrology for Seattle’s water resources from drinking water through drainage, and Restore Our Waters, the city’s initiative to protect and restore Seattle’s urban waterways.”

 

Everything in the Northwest is green.  Even one of our old theatre friends now works promoting sustainable agriculture.

 

There were 5 films.  SJ Chiro (our Annex Friend) created a fairy tale based on a story by Brett Fetzer (another Annex Friend) narrated by Susanna Burney (another Annex Friend)  Cynthia Whalen (another Annex Friend) was in it.  Other people we knew from our time at Annex worked on the film and some were at the screening and it was good to see them and go to Eleseyan afterwards for some yummy Seattle microbrew.

 

But, I was filled with mommy guilt throughout entire film event.  My Kid would have enjoyed the short films, especially the stop action animation piece in which the role of water was played by clear glass marbles and the two live-action stories featuring children near her own age.  I wish she had been there to see some kids on screen from outside the Disney Studio stable and I was blaming myself for not monitoring everyones protein, rest and happiness levels in the hours ahead of 7:00pm in order  to alter the balance of my child so that we could have gone as a family to see the films and friends.  Besides, there were some friends’ kids in the audience she might have played with.

 

Two of the films featured novelty photography and modern dancers in the rain which reminded me why I was hesitant to major the arts while at the University of Montana.

 

 SJ Chiro’s films and Kendall Cornell’s latest work Clown Axioms both rely on fairy tale imagery and that is exciting to me.

Sometimes the simple things take me so long, like logging onto the internet using the hotel’s wifi connection that by the time I have my Clownmommy dashboard on the screen I forgot what I had intended to write about.

I don’t know how much of my “writing time” I wasted hitting buttons and guessing at the procedure for logging in from a different connection.  I ended up calling The Husband on the phone and having him walk me through the simple procedure that I ought to have down by now.  But, I don’t.  Story of my life–and that’s why I am a clown.  The movements are too small though, getting frustrated in front of a laptop, it would have to be so subtle, so underplayed.  Maybe it could work on film, certainly not on stage.  In either case it would be a pretty boring piece to watch.  (I do have a performance date in the fall…will I do something completely new or rework something I’ve already tried…)

While I am trying to remember what brilliant mommy thoughts I had that are now lost I am overhearing parts of the conversation of the two men at the set of couches next to my own seating arrangement here in the lobby of the Westin.  One of the men seems to be ordering custom made shirts and possibly other clothing from the other man.  It seems to be a regular event as the salesman type in a suit said to the other man in shirtsleeves “See you in September.”  And they both made references to “last time.”  I think that’s how Obama gets his clothes.  Fascinating.  Most of my clothes come from the sale racks at discount stores. 

Speaking of clothes, I have been looking at the clothes of the people on the street her in Seattle.  So much khaki, such baggy clothes.  It was a difference I noticed right away when we moved to New York and there was so much black and the clothes were so much tighter, even on people who weren’t athlete thin.  There is also more bright  color in New York.  Seattle people wear muted earth tones.  When we come back each summer I start to feel dressed wrong in Seattle, but by the time I am in Missoula I start out feeling so uncomfortable I inevitably buy items like Tevas or shorts that I proceed to wear nearly every day of my visit home and never wear again back in New York.  But I did notice a Gucci and Louis Vitton stores right across the street from each other near the 5th Avenue theatre in Downtown Seattle.  That was a bit disorienting.

 I see the thin young people riding their bikes and am then startled to see myself, a middle-aged mom type, reflected in a window, not at all the person I was when I lived her as an aspiring actress riding a bike while wearing Dock Martin boots with black leggings under a skirt, oversized T and flannel shirts.  Yeah that.  I also learned from another out of work actor that if you got a very large Starbucks coffee off the day you could doctor it up with vanilla and cinnamon and milk and it tasted like a latte and with enough milk it was a fine stand in for a meal all for less than $2.  

That period of my life came completely to an end when The Husband, Baby and I flew back to Seattle from NYC where we had lived for only a couple of months for the final Annex party in the theatre space at 1916 Fourth Avenue.  We stayed at the Kings Inn under the Monorail tracks on 5th Avenue.  In preparation for the trip I pushed my stroller around Macy’s in Fulton Mall and Marshall’s at Atlantic center struggling to find something “presentable. .  Presentable was a disappointing goal for such an emotionally charged special event.    I was still nursing so I ended up with a easy access stretchy polyester  top and skirt outfit for the party, a far cry from the slip-like or corset containing Betsy Johnson dresses I had worn to previous Annex-related events that were part of the courtship that led to our wedding here in Seattle over 10 years ago.

And my alone time has once again come to an end, The Husband, My Kid and The Mother-In-Law will be here in a few moments and we’re going to drive to a mall.

a moment or so

I’m sitting here ALONE  in the bar in the lobby of the Westin, the hotel that looks like a silo, in downtown Seattle.  I have in front of me my laptop which I haven’t touched since we got off the plane and a pretty lemondrop martini.  The Husband took My Kid for a walk so I could have some time to myself.  But,  I’ve been checking my e-mail and facebook which is good because we’re trying to hook up with some old friends while we are in Seattle.  (And of course there was at least one e-mail from someone who used to live in Brooklyn, back home to visit their relatives checking to see if we’re around to get together, and we’re not…) Though I have been here, at this table with my laptop, for some time I have not yet written the blog that I sat down here intending to write.  There is so much to process.  This is the city where The Husband and I met working in the same theatre.  This is where we became engaged, got married, had a baby, bought a house  (I felt tears trying to well up behind my eyes this morning at Home Depot, where we drove The Husband’s mother on an errand for some shelf brackets for her apartment, because we spent so much time at Home Depot with our little baby, right after we bought our little house that needed so much work, as we lay the groundwork for the life that we ended up not living in Seattle.  I had selected my paint chips…

AND THERE’S MY CELLPHONE RINGING!

“Mom.  Dad fell asleep.”

“Are you in the room?”

“Yeah.”

“OK.  I’ll be up in a little while and then we’ll go swimming.”

and that’s all she wrote

more cool friends moving away

The day before we left for Seattle there was a party for neighborhood friends who are moving to Uganda.  I was shocked by how tall were these little girls, all going into 4th grade, My Kid among them.  We met when they were babies and our talk was about diapers and strollers and weaning and we were lucky to put 2 sentences together in an hour long playdate.  Now the kids go off on their own and amuse themselves.  One mom calls it the sweet spot.  They’re still young enough to want to be seen with you but when they are with other kids watching them can be effortless for hours at a time.

My daughters childhood in Brooklyn flashes before my eyes.

Ssanyu and Mutessi were one of the first Mommy-Baby pairs I met when I started walking around and exploring our new neighborhood of Forte Greene, Brooklyn in May and June of 2001.

At the hotel in Seattle I awake at 3:00 am so sad that our friends are moving away.  So sad that our babies have been vaporized into almost-tweens.

travel day

something for my blog because I can’t get online at the airport Thursday July 30, 6:05pm JetBlue

 

 

6:05  We’re in the JetBlue terminal, sitting “outside” in the middle of the concourse in front of 5IVESTEAK.  I am alone at the table at the moment.  Ken and Miya have gone to MUJI to buy pens.  Here they come.  My Kid is very excited about her penpencil.

 

It has been a long day for all of us and we aren’t even on the plane for our cross country flight yet.

 

We’re eating very expensive food because we need to eat NOW.  

 

I think

 

I don’t know what I think

 

7:22  We are on our delayed flight which is still boarding.  A completely full flight.  “Please people sit in your assigned seat.  We have a completely full plane.”  This is going to be loads of fun.

 

The way we travel; the three of us each with a carry-on rolling bag and shoulder bags.  My parents pack a car with a cooler and thermos and lots of reading material, blankets and extra jackets.

 

I’m wondering what I am going to do in Montana if it’s chilly with only one pair of mid-calf pants, not socks and no jacket.

 

Traveling like this we have to buy everything we need to eat and drink.

 

If you drive in the summer in Montana you have to have (or at least you did when I was a kid) a bucket, an axe and a shovel in your car at all times in case you need to help put out a fire.

 

Baggage.

Packing

07/30/09

I’m drinking my coffee and trying to pull my brain together to get My Kid and I packed and ready to go.  The Husband is packed and working.  My Kid is still sleeping.

I’m counting the hours and looking around the apartment listing what needs to be done.  It’s 9 am.  We need to be getting into a car service car at 5 pm.  Some friends of My Kid will be at a local pool at 11:00 am.  I’d like her to join them but I don’t know if I will be able to make that happen.

Woah! And I’m back!

My Kid is still asleep.  My plan for focusing by making a packing list in my blog has fallen apart.

Now My Kid is awake and hungry and watching Hannah Montana.  It’s an episode from the first season and it makes me want to cry the way Miley Cyrus and Emily Osmet don’t look that much older than my daughter and her friends do now.

Too many clothes in my carry-on already and I know I’m going to be cold in Montana.  It’s so hot and muggy here in Brooklyn it’s really hard to remember to pack long sleeves and long pants.   Maybe I’ll just plan to buy a new pair of jeans when I’m home.

Post production meeting e-mail

Kendall followed up with an e-mail including a long description of the show we are working on as well as this catchy short version:

With their new show Clown Axioms, Kendall Cornell and Clowns Ex Machina take a cold, hard clown-look at gory fairy tales and gothic romance – and the thrilling terrors within. Through a series of short vignettes, songs and dances this troupe of all-women clowns creates a grave yet preposterous world filled with mystery, delightful gore and high humor.  

This sounds fun!

Reading over the actual work, the literature and the clown–I am excited about the project.  Focusing on data bases, spreadsheets and mailing lists last night sucked the life out of me.

 I really do struggle with result of the idea that I have to first succeed at office management tasks before I can allow myself be creative which really puts a damper over this little light of mine.

I must have been traumatized by an early data entry experience

Our home is not large.  Rain is pouring outside.   My daughter has a friend over and she has decided she would like to play in the front living-dining-media-play-room part of the apartment.  So I am relegated to the back bedroom half of the apartment which is fine with me.  I’m listening NPR and writing this blog post in which I hope to unwind all the anxiety I have built up over the past few days.

Last night, we had a production meeting for Clown Axioms which I had been looking forward to because if I do too much stay-at-home-mommy-camp without a break I start to go a little nuts.  In addition we’re going to travel West tomorrow to see all of My Kid’s grandparents and cousins and there is the stress involved in that, cleaning the apartment, packing the clothes, which involves multiple trips to the laundromat both to drop off stuff to have washed (towels, socks, jeans…) and to wash clothes myself using my own detergent and pulling half the stuff out of the dryer while it is still damp (black clothes, brightly colored clothes, clothing containing spandex) additionally my husband has his shirts done and of course the wool suits are dry cleaned.  I grew up in Montana where maybe dress coats are dry cleaned in the spring but that’s about it.  My mother and her peers all had laundry rooms!  We washed jackets with tennis balls to fluff up the down.  Special t-shirts were routinely tumbled in the dryer to get the wrinkles out and then hung to dry.  Other things went on drying wracks or ironed on a board set up in front of the television.  When I was growing up during the last great period of economic downturn and environmental awareness my mother eschewed paper towels and used wash clothes that she threw down the basement stairs to end up in the laundry room.  I can comfortably handle only 1 or 2 wash clothes in the bathroom and at the kitchen sink and one hand towel in each place.  I have no laundry room, mud room, or back porch to hang wet anything.  I can’t seem to manage haul laundry down the two flights of stairs two blocks to the laundromat more than once a week.  I am always behind.

As a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t stay home I have had a great deal of difficulty getting a handle on the housework over the years.  I am experimenting with hiring a cleaning lady which friends of mine do without thinking and which I have a great deal of angst about,  possibly because I am descended from Nebraska farm wives and why shouldn’t I be able to get my work done by myself.  OK. So yesterday, the cleaning lady cleaned while I went up and down the stairs and down the street with six bags of laundry.  At the same time as I was saying good-bye to the cleaning lady I was telling My Kid to put on her shoes and get ready for her tennis class.  As soon as her tennis class was over I was telling her how we were going to take the train to Penn Station so I could go to a production meeting and The Husband would take her out to dinner in the city.

And so I found myself sitting around a conference table with the other clown women excited to see them and to get going on our next project.  At the same time all the talk about all the things that need to be done to take our company to the next level began to fill me with anxiety.  There was much discussion of fundraising and data bases and donor spread sheets and mailing lists.  I found myself feeling guilty for hesitating to “step up to the plate” at the same time knowing that I am already counting down the hours and things that need to be done before we check in at the airport tomorrow.  (Phone, Nintendo DS, and lap charges have to be collected and packed.  Windows have to be closed.  Electronics that must be turned off.  Suitcases that need to be packed.  If the flight is at 7 should I feed My Kid before we leave or pack food to eat on the road or buy something at the airport.  If we leave NYC at 7 and get to Seattle at 10 how many hours will we really be on the plane?)  I really couldn’t bend my mind around exporting the “vertical response CSV files” by the end of the week people were talking about.  I just felt vaguely guilty and incompetent.  When the multitude of tasks were being assigned I felt so much anxiety it crossed my mind that maybe it would be so much work that the performances at La Mama that I have been looking forward to for some time might not be worth it.  I held back and was careful with my volunteer choices.  Press kits.  That involves hand carrying original documents to Kinko’s and printing a set number of copies and arranging them colored folders in a particular order.  I can do that.  It’s immediate, tactile and physical.  Other jobs were so technical or so vague I knew they would leave my head as soon as I crossed the threshold of the conference room.  Then I would come back from my trip Seattle and Montana, finish up My Kid’s summer activities and get her settled into her new class and grade only to realize I’ve completely forgotten to do some clerical task for the clown troupe the dereliction of which will cause everyone in the company to hate me.

And then there was the doctor appointment I had this morning which was just a check-up but in the context of my anxiety over packing for a cross country trip to see the in-laws and the parents and the publicity and fundraising tasks of the growing theatrical company I was ready to throw in the towel and not even go when the voice mail from the doctor’s receptionist reminded me that the doctor runs on time and a tardiness of more than 10 minutes could cause the appointment to be rescheduled and or cancelled.  Since I had a different appointment in Brooklyn Heights at 9 am and then had to take My Kid back to Fort Greene to hook up with her friend for an outing to the Scholastic Store in Manhattan and get back to Brooklyn Heights in time for the appointment.  I had to be talked down from my fear of failure by someone who pointed out that it would not be the end of the world if the particular combination of car service and subway rides that I put together failed to get me to the doctor’s office by my check-up had to be rescheduled and the doctor I’ve never met probably would not have time to be upset with me if all the pieces of my life puzzle did not fit together at  exactly 11:15 am in a particular office in a particular building in a particular part of New York City.  

I don’t know who these people are that they have been talking about on the news who use way to much medical intervention.  (They must be hanging out with those “Welfare Moms” who go through pregnancy and childbirth not to mention living with a baby/toddler/preschooler/kid just for a few additional dollars per month.)  After I’ve been weighed and measured, had my blood drawn,  peed in a cup and wired for an ECG. It was just an office visit, completely anticlimactic given my fear of  cancer/heard disease/unknown.  I’m done!  Significant numbers of calendar pages will turn before I seek additional medical care.

Black men close to home

I have so much faith in Obama that I think the whole Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest fiasco will be cleared up when the police officer, the professor and the President of the United States have a beer together at the White House. 

There is no such hope for Shem Walker, a man I never met, who was shot to death by a cop on his own stoop 12 blocks from where I live in Brooklyn.  He is my neighbor.

Undercover cops dressed as drug dealers loitering on the stoop of Mr Walker’s elderly mother.  Mr. Walker told them to move.   They did not respond.  So he pushed them off his elderly mother’s stoop.  That’s when one of the undercover cops fatally shot Mr. Walker in the chest.  Mr Walker died.  The undercover cop required two stitches.

These two scenarios have been playing out in my imagination for days.