Coming Up: Families and Funerals Galore, oh my! The A-Team meet with a little over-scheduled R&R during family fun and memorial weekend, which proves to be a stretch. Will tendons snap to the rhythm of the cardio-beat? Will comrades go cray-cray over crepes? A long forlorn dancing habit serenades our heroine with siren snippets of succulent strings and breathy bandoneons. Avoiding bears and beers in family festivity, the (W)rights fly with gelato-stained maws to try the tango once again. Will arches endure? Will communities revive? Will the rest of the family ever wind their way home from the post-nuptial nuptial gala? And as mysteriously as they arrived, the Falconers fly the roost, leaving the chimera of "normalcy" and "routine" in their white-capped wake! Can such mirages auger disaster?
Strap on your dancing flats, break out the chopsticks and tango over the sushi bridge for the answer to these questions and more.
A Stretch of a Spot Or a Spot of Stretching.
The weird week wound down... wonkily? But wonky in a good way, lest anyone fret. After a flurry and flutter of extraneous office oddities, Englettlaw went dark for much of Thursday and Friday. This was conveniently abutting the scheduled "our hall is swarming with painters blaring Russian pop music on their radios, and the whole place looks abandoned" portion of our office schedule. The poor clients who mounted our lift and came out to the CSI crime scene that appeared to be "our lobby" were disconcerted to say the least.
This "going-dark" semi-shutdown was more directly approximate to the arrival of Ryan and Rachel for the upcoming family festivities and funereal chaser (cousin's getting married, coincidentally the day before Rachel's childhood friend's memorial service).
Mom-boss leapt at the opportunity to hop into a car and retrieve her prodigal daughter plus one from Seatac on Thursday. I, in turn, leapt at the opportunity to lock the door behind her and "work" in peace and quiet. On Friday, operations remained minimal, although we did both come into work in the morning, and I returned later in the afternoon.
Since the office was dark, and no appointments were set, we decided to start Friday morning with a YMCA "Morning Stretch" class. Accustomed to the Y-Pilates-style (i.e. "a couple of regulars and one or two random people spread across a very large aerobics room") we blanched with mouths agape upon our arrival at the multipurpose space. Afore us was a cinereal sea of senior sweat pants! I believe in those moments of mounting mirth, my mother couldn't look straight at me (in my surprisingly coordinated - for a woman who's daily wardrobe "statement" is "rolled out of bed and found this on the washer/dryer" - workout ensemble, and lack of an AARP card) without laughing.
Once we were given instructions - grab a mat, set up by a wall space - we actually had a great class chock full of the kind of stretching and moving I should be doing pretty much every morning; coincidentally this is also the kind of stretching and moving that I never do because it's just too demanding of my increasingly rationed out patience.
Upon completion of the full relaxation, we sufficiently erased all improvements with a sprint of work, and were once more off to The Sports Bar in town to meet up with the sibs and sibs-in-law. I guess "we" were watching the Vanderbilt baseball game, though the ladies left to find sunglasses at Target (all of ours had been lost). Narrowly evading the steely finger trap of a cubic zirconian bijoux which would not let go (and now we know why my mother carries several tons of various lotions and unguents in her purse), my sister eventually chose between her eight pairs of prospective lunnettes. I found a pair that passed the head-bopping test (can I put them on my head and will they stay there reliably if I look down?), and went back to work while the rest of the menagerie plowed onwards. Sororal shopping spree concluded.
The clan reconnoitered once I'd gathered Andrew for a BRIDGE full of sushi (my suggestion, as a place where parents probably could not usually go with kids in tow) and we again bailed before the massive ice cream and donuts outing that was to follow.
Today is wide open until this evening, when I try my tango-legs again after possibly the longest straight hiatus from dancing of my life. I'm more than a little nervous, but looking forward to seeing everyone again. I'm only bailing on a family wedding for the event. I'd better dust those shoes off and behave presentably. Oh dear. I've forgotten what on earth that might mean.
Tango-lango-Ding-Dong: The DINK is back! But Leaving Early (so what else is new?)
Well, all said, I'm glad that I'm a horrible, horrible relative. There are perks to such things. Mostly missing out on otherwise and impliedly mandatory "family affairs" to do something more fun... like a root canal... I jest, I jest (the jesting fits the socks, which have kind of a Neapolitan vibe to me!). Yesterday evening, my family flocked on mass to a wedding in some far flung corner of the Mt. Vernon area (all I know is that, judging by the picture my sister sent me, there were bears). I remained flockless. In lieu of the post-nuptial nuptials (said cousin has actually been married via civil ceremony for some months), I went to on my first tango outing of 2014.
2014! We're halfway through 2014! Which is surreal. I used to tango just about three times a week, often travelling great distances to do so. Even during the law school slump, I never went more than a month between some form of milonga or other, and often had practice partners. But between some significant lifestyles changes, the achin' arch o' pain-o-rama, and several other major intervening events, it just hasn't worked out. I'm still nursing my arch a little. I can run a half hour (or perhaps only 25 minutes when I'm still getting over a cold and am simultaneously running too fast because it's so darned hard to hit my cadence at a slower pace). I can walk for straight hours. But dancing puts all new stressors and strains on feet. And, as my PT was wont to point out, it took some years building up the strength in my feet. It's going to take some time to rebuild that strength.
I was gentle with myself, staying to teach a lesson and getting in a few three-song tandas before cramming my bag full of food (because I'm classy like that) and fleeing the premises. But it was grounding to stumble-step traspie back into the thick of a community. While I may have drifted to the mysterious periphery long before my hiatus, it's affirming to see it continue on in a familiar way. People evolve, but they also frequently don't change at all! Every one there was so very concertedly the same from dance style to personality, to the inevitable little creaks and cracks of tensions between those styles.
But back to how I'm glad I was a horrible relative. I was at a tango event in town. Meaning I wasn't at an all-nighter out-door wedding in the middle of somewhere with family I usually only see at funerals. Guilty that my sister and her husband flew out specifically for a wedding I could have easily reached by car? Maybe. Possibly more if it hadn't been a late night even completely overlapping with my previous engagement. Possibly more so if they hadn't been requested with a last minute noon email on the day of to arrive two hours early at the sight for family photos that happened a predictable forty minutes late. Possibly even more so if after the brief belated 8:15 p.m. ceremony there was not another hour and a half of milling while the bride and groom reunited for their wedding photos. Possibly even more so if it weren't outdoors on a temperate but chilly June evening flocked with mosquitos... so many ifs. Let's just say, I don't feel too bad about missing the wedding for some flat-footed tango boogie. I may, in fact, feel pretty good about it.
Before the Tango-extravaganza began, Andrew and I had an oddly early dinner at Boomer's with the departing dutiful contingent of my family. They were off to arrive early for those last-minute-requested wedding photos that would run late. Of course. But first, they came for burgers, baby. And shocker of shockers: while Boomer's is hardly dead at 4:20, there are actually seats and services. College is letting out, so perhaps we can actually eat there again sometimes after several thwarted school year attempts.
After returning home for another small interlude of time (we'd filled a previous one with a nap), we date-nighted ourselves to Chocolate Necessities for a groggy gelato and coffee. Having steeled up on ebony indulgence, we helped set up for TE, mostly by unloading several tons of sweets and snacks (sampling as appropriate, along the way, and marking out exactly what items I'd be swiping in bags and cups upon my hasty departure). And here we return to the beginning.
With a double-cyclical return of "Adella stayed out late last night, but still rose at 4:50 a.m. on the freakin' dot-dash-pip"
Still, I feel no huge concerns in the creaky arch and am ready to take on the day! My sis and bro-in-law are here for one more event: a memorial service for a childhood friend/old neighbor. Since I never knew him, I'll be opting out of that as well, but will likely be filling in the pre and post gaps with some sort of interaction. Starting with getting the story on that bear that crashed the wedding! Over crepes, apparently.
Carpe the Crepe, baby! And let there be Sunday!
Ask Not For Whom The Crepe Crumbles Breakfast Bonding Blitz in Yuppie Limbo.
I'm not really a crepe person, although I still stand by our collective brainstorm to get the Food Truck Statutory Crepe up on wheels. There's a certain disappointment inherent in all my previous crepe experiences. And, perhaps because crepes have certain comfortably "different" connotations, they tend to associate with other yuppie trappings that don't work for me. These include a tendency for louder restaurants, fussier ingredients, and higher prices. But really, I'm not really a ____ (name most any kind of breakfast indulgence other than a "stay at home and eat my hippy bread and eggy-flax sandwich with avocado") type person, so my personal compatibility with any given breakfast destination is irrelevant. As such, I had no cavils agreeing to meet the "fam" at Magdalena's Creperie for a Sunday morning breakfast.
Note, I say breakfast. This was no brunch. For one, we - at least initially - agreed to meet at 9:00 a.m. Ten is the earliest cut off for brunch in my land. Beyond time considerations, brunch implies a certain glut of culinary gorging; as well it should, considering that its very portmanteau implies that either breakfast or lunch has been folded into this grand meal. Crepes - the Crepes at Magdalena's, at any rate - may have pretenses of culinary indulgence, but lack all trappings of excess in their trim presentation and spare caloric explosions. The "indulgence" lay exclusively in how thoroughly "hand-crafted" (dare I say "artisanal" and run for the skies shrieking?) each plate was. How "locally sourced" the ingredients were. How poshly viands and bevvies were nestled in creative and indeterminately ethnic ceramics, and how sonorously the ting-ting of the silver echoed off the thoroughly insulated vaulted ceilings.
Thinking about the experience later, I wouldn't say that I'd never go to Magdalena's of my own volition, but I would only go there under very particular circumstances. It would be an off-meal time on a sunny day, and I'd be meeting a friend for something a little more than coffee but a little less than a meal. We'd sit outside, and maybe split a pastry or pierogi.
As for Breakfast, I'm not super keen on repeating the experience. Our troupe was already running about an hour behind, or else the experience may have been worse. Andrew and I arrived around 9:30, and dropped the terrifying news that their quaint little corner shoppe would be harboring a party of six at some point. No such space was available on our arrival, so we sat at a different table and waited for another family to leave. By the time our "party" arrived, the other family had left, but the tables hadn't been cleared or combined. Since Magdalena's is quite a tiny little echo chamber, half of the party went back outside, Andrew and I remained awkwardly seated, and the remaining half stood in the middle of several crucial passageways, keeping very still as others attempted ingress and egress past them.
The restaurant was an 80-90 decibel venue and the tables were lined up long-style, so I can't say I really know how the rest of the group enjoyed their culinary experience. Or their evening before. Or really anything other than that texting via cell phone was an acceptable substitute if only reception weren't so poor in that area. There were raised and garbled voices, and many facial expressions to clue us into some sense of communal experience. Andrew - who can't hear all that well anyways, and was in the middle of the table, enjoying a bit of monologue - was thoroughly unphased by the atmosphere. I know that much. Beyond that, though, I am pretty sure that all scheduled guests were accounted for.
Having turned ravenous much earlier than the 10:15 a.m. seating time and 10:30 a.m. dining time, I'd - once again - already eaten, so my culinary experience was limited to minor salad. The salad was basic, but good. I am sure that the field greens were hand-crafted, local and appreciable artisanal.
The crepes looked different than I'd have anticipated. I even would posit that they do not resemble the salaciously seductive macro-photos of crepes that litter their walls and website. I think of crepes as weird french pancake-tortillas. It's an imperfect analogy, but mostly I expect "a decent bunch of ingredients wrapped up in a manner that ranges from quesadilla to enchilada to burrito in final girth" for my standard crepe order, depending on the hipness and poshness quotient (food truck = burrito; cafe/creperie = enchilada).
These were "polish crepes" and/or "fancy because we're in yuppie central Fairhaven and these are hand-crafted local organic crepes" - They were more like the fancy lite-pancake-taco salad of the crepe world. A delicate lining of egg across the crepe foundation. In the center, a dab of other painstakingly assembled ingredients. Finally, the sides of the crepe were volumized to rise in crinkles and create little crepe-walls around the inside ingredients. Pretty. Purportedly tasty, but spare and surprising.
I have no quibbles with lighter meals of high quality, but it does raise the issue of price, in that these crepes were ten dollars a pop before adding in the french-press local coffee or the hand-squeezed 6 ouncer of ginger-lemongrass orange juice. We get to a point where with Andrew's voracious metabolism (slower than it was, but still pretty stunning to those more familiar with regular humans), a satisfying meal would bankrupt us in a few visits. And I'm fussy enough about my food, that I'd just as soon hand-craft my own locally-bought-from-Freddy's-bulk-bin-sales-section food for cents on the dollar.
Anyways, as I say, I could definitely see meeting up with somebody for a nicer coffee on a lovely day. And I'm sure - given the attractiveness of Fairhaven to our frequently upper-upper middle class guests - that I'll be there again. But probably not on the regular rotation.
Though I must reflect that sometimes it's nice to go places that aren't "us" as a couple. Because there is a decided bonding ritual involved in the post-game discussion of why a certain place "isn't us" and that in itself cements this oddly satisfying "US" buzz. Kind of like when we bond over how our wedding was the best wedding ever and feel superior to other weddings that we've begrudgingly attended. Shared smugness is a solid glue for any relationship!
Restaurant review aside, Sunday was a nice day. Andrew and I took advantage of being in Fairhaven to drop off one of his bikes for an extensive tune up (hei hei says "hey, bye bye" for a while). We popped into Village Books and bought updated guide books for Prague (my new morning tradition will be reading random snippets of the guidebook, butchering Czech pronunciation of basic phrases, and insisting that our first trip with be the cubist lamp-post followed by the miniature museum).
I even managed to take another nap! This is miraculous. Apparently I just need sufficient time and a decent sleep deficit to be capable of all sorts of slumbering!
Rachel and Ryan finished off their wedding experience and spent yesterday at a memorial service. They're now heading out on a morning plane to Houston for an unanticipated lay-over in Huston before leaping back into full parental mode. I'm thinking I'll ride down with them to actually have some non-restaurant time with them. Next time we see them, they'll be back to "mommy/Moooooooooooom" and "daddy/i-want-moooooooooooomy"
As we wind our way back to a regular week, I've got a mediation to plan for and lord knows what else waiting in the work-wings. But that will be sorted out later. Probably not over crepes.
Back to Work and Other Oddities - Let Your Normally Abnormal June Commence
After a mini-reunion-coda last evening (one generation above me, so I missed that too) the family events have concluded. No more incredulous hiding from extended events. No more text-tag logistical limbo. No more concerned waiter's faces upon hearing the answer to "dinner for two?" We're sidling to status quo after a bit of May - June diversion. No event-races. No sallies in Right Coast rowdies. No tormentous trips to the airport. No half-closed offices and recondite excel tables dividing "personal time" against the odd hour squeezed in between meals and excursions.
Just (W)rights, mom-boss, bikes, and work. Which is plenty after a tsunami of excitement this last month or so. Leslie is still off sipping tequila somewhere warm, so things aren't technically back to normal. And with a Thursday mediation coming up for clients completely off the Practicemaster grid (yes, I'll spelunk through the programs before Thursday to set them up myself... maybe), it won't necessarily be a smooth summery skate to another placid weekend. But it's a stumble in the (W)right direction at any rate.
Yesterday, I decided that I really have more meaningful bonding times with people when I catch them in low-stimulation environments (shocker) and that I felt like I hadn't really gotten a chance to just chill with R&R this trip. Being stuck in a car together is an excellent locale for catching up, so I crashed the caravan back to Seatac. I'm not sure it's really skipping work when you join your mom-boss to do it.
I'm really glad I got the chance to do so. I got to hear all kinds of little snippets of otherwise unshared news and strands of forming life plans. I got further caught up on the tale of the grandiose wedding ceremony in the middle of nowhere (dancing bears being a post-production edit on my part, but one that I feel good about), and the perfectly-PNW memorial service held at the Deming Log Show Grounds. We made pleasantly perfunctory time (no Seattle snarls beyond the usual congestion), and the Falconers upped the ante by changing to an earlier flight. I'm told this flight ended up sitting on the runway for two hours in Chicago, but that this was still an improvement on their previously scheduled flight through Houston (which also was delayed after being scheduled to get in at 2: 00 a.m.)
Falconers flown back towards their roosts, we wheeled back to Bellingham and reluctantly opened Pandora's casket of "WORK EMAILS and messages." Nothing awful, but enough to consume the remaining shreds of work time before pilates, to which I dragged my snively sleepy little toosh on principle if not out of some grand desire to contort and ache amongst a community of flummoxed newbies and jocular regulars. But I'm glad I went, as I often am. Despite feeling this residual malaise that could be blamed on so many factors that I've stopped attempting to determine proximate causality (hormones, sleep, heat, lurgy, visceral reaction to the indignities of a world that has yet to officially declare me queen and give me my own island with weekly tributes of exotic vegetables and dark chocolates), I felt great controting and torturing myself in front of an oh so non-judgmental mirror.
It's fascinating to notice how infrequently people use the mirrors in our class compared to me. I'd say either it's clear that I'm a raging narcissist or I have built up an extremely high tolerance for the horrors of self-reflection during my dancing days. Maybe I'm just keeping an eye on my evil doppelganger, because I know she's itching to get out and dally with evil Associate Thompson and Auntie Adella. And with Andrew's gradual ascension to the top of the wage-earner percentile pyramid, Fitness Instructor Adelia knows her time will come! Don't worry, though, she's got her own stash of socks, so it will be fun to compare wardrobes when she finally bursts erumpent through the looking glass.
But for the meantime, she stays at bay waiting for the weekend wearies to catch up with me and let me drop my guard. Stay on your guard as to tip your toes into the week, though. Gyrotonics attacks are only minutes away and nobody is safe!
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