"Keep a green tree in your heart...

and perhaps the singing bird will come." --Chinese proverb.

It was one of those mornings where I worried we might hurt someone.

Beloved left me at 5:30 am to head to campus to finish writing up a Final. He said he reset the alarm for 6:25. So when I woke up to the dog rustling in her pen I thought I had beat the alarm. Wrong. The alarm had been gonging for 35 minutes. Oh snap.

Literally one of those mornings when I did not have time to make our bed. Studies have shown people who make their beds every morning tend to be more organized and live happier lifestyles. Well I don't know about more organized. I like to have the bed made so I can dump the laundry on it from the dryer and then have it sit there on a flat surface until that night when I dump it onto the floor (kidding! just kidding!) Beloved and I have a rule whoever gets out of bed last makes the bed. Oh the comedy that ensues on weekend mornings!

Thankfully both children are up. Tank is incredibly fully capable of feeding himself now in the mornings. God is good.  Bumpo was up and fussing with her outfit and her hair.

"Those shoes make you look like a duck" says her loving and ever-mindful older brother.
"Tannnk that's not very nice. Bunp your shoes are adorable."
"Thanks Mom."
Tank: "Well Mom your shoes make YOU look like a duck, too!"
I think I may have said something like "Well your mouth makes you sound like a turd" but I hope they didn't hear that.

Being the ever vigilant mother against school lunches, I slapped together two separate lunches but spent the next ten minutes trying to find paper bags (Item 1 on my shopping list for today, apparently!) Multiple conversations ensued "I NEED YOU TO FIND ME A BAG FOR YOUR LUNCH". Bumpo graciously tossed down a TJ Maxx bag, which snagged in the wreath at the bottom of the stairs. Still eternally grateful for her. Tank and I had a few more interactions where I sternly suggested he find me a lunch bag. I think he just really wanted me to give him cash for lunch, but seeing as that would entail me digging through sticky car cushions for change, I insisted on the bag item. Finally he tugged a large canvas grocery shopping bag, the size of a large bag of cat food (check Item 2 on the shopping list!) and said "here use this".

God I love that kid. No compunction whatsoever about using a bag that large for a pitiful slapped-together homemade lunch.

As I am heading out the door to take Tank off to school (his classes start 10 minutes earlier than his sister's) I hear a plaintive wail "Wait what? Where's Dad? Who's taking me to school?!"

"I am. I'll be right back!"
"Wait you should have left like two minutes ago, Mom? I'm gonna be late!"
"No you won't."

Then the panic sets in. Where are my keys. Where.are.my.keys. I make a quick round 'round the house for my purse. Thankfully I spot my purse on the couch, where I had jettisoned it last night. I had to switch cars because my baby, my Suburban, is in the shop getting maintenance. See this all started last night. The world shifted because I had to leave my car in the shop.

"MOM WHAT ARE YOU DOING GET IN THE CAR RIGHT NOW!" another plaintive wail from the upstairs.

Then I said the two words I never like to say.

I told her to Shut up. I told her to Shut up and then when she argued again I told her to Shut up. Again. Oh I was in a rare form this morning.

She's 13. Thirteen. Which is really no excuse.

I need to be the adult in this scenario. I need to show restraint and poise and calmness under pressure. Which all flew out the window when for a third time she told me I needed to leave. I need to model self-control.

"Mom you better leave right now!" (Gah she sounds just like her mother. )

"FINE I AM LEAVING RIGHT NOW BUT I AM GOING TO DRIVE REALLY REALLY SLOW."

Aw yeah. Rill mature Mom. If it's any consolation I'm still embarrassed that I told her to shut up.

Got Tank dropped off at school (seriously people? You've had children in the public school system for nearly a decade, if not more. Who parks head-first in the drop off lane? Who? Who? I'm looking at YOU Lincoln Navigator!)

Make all two traffic lights back to the house all the while having an internal conversation about driving safely and not striking some student who is jaywalking across Conifer from the gas station. I swear those children need to wear bright orange safety vests. With the trees from the gas station landscaping and the nearby apartment complex they are truly invisible until they appear magically in the center of the road. I am duly paranoid about students jaywalking against the traffic on Conifer. ( I yelled at a cat once for running out in front of us on the road. I was shaking as I pulled the car over to the side, got out to check and see if I'd hit it, and saw it cowering in the tall grass in the field by the roadside. I walked over to it, said "You dumb cat! I almost hit you!" and then got back in my car to drive away. But hey I didn't tell it to Shut up at least).

Make it home. Pull up to the front of our house honk the horn once and here comes Bumpo in her duck shoes and her Texas Tech tshirt.
"Youre going to need to write me a late pass, Mom." (Me: I don't have a bra on. I don't go inside any public building without a bra on.)

"No I'm not you have ten minutes till your first class." (It's either that or I go home and put on some underpinnings).

"No Mom the bell rings at 7:30. It's a passing period. You have to be in class by 7:40."
(I say nothing but internally tell myself, did I not just say that myself?)

Make the traffic light, praising Jesus all the way through and turn right onto the street to school.

"Mom. You can slow down now."

Now keep this in mind. I'm not driving my Burb. I'm driving Tank's Jeep. The turquoise one from the 90's. It is a fun little car to toodle around in. Whenever you press the accelerator it makes this fun "rumrummmrumrumrummrummmm" sound. Makes it seem like you really are a pioneer. It only sounds a little less refined than my Suburban. I'm driving no less unsafely in this vehicle.

"Mom do I look okay?"
"Yes honey I think you look cute. I think your shoes are cute. You don't look like a duck."
"Thanks Mom. I was going to be self-conscious about that all day."

Then we have a brief discussion about what the term "consider the source" really means when someone insults you.

Get Nat to the front of her school, she jumps out says 'bye Mom, and I say "Bye Nat. Love you. Jesus bless you.' Like I always do.

Get nearly sideswiped by a silver Prius with a Bernie 2016 bumper sticker on it (Jesus bless you too!) and  head out.

Then it happens.

I hear a bird singing. Literally the clouds parted and the sun shone right on my turquoise Jeep and I hear this robin trill out this joyous little song. It was glorious. I settled back in my seat and felt like this literal weight be lifted off of my chest. Like someone had been pressing on my shoulders all morning and they backed away.

I took a deep cleansing breath, drove my car back to Lemay Ave, and headed home. Made it through another morning.

I am grateful for mornings like this. So often we need some sort of release from the stress. Be it yoga or a long run or a good workout at the gym. And I am going to go out with my dog later for a few miles.
But I am grateful for that bird. I am grateful that it chose that particular moment to sing so loudly that I could hear it through my closed window of my car as I was driving home. I am grateful that I could hear it, that I could appreciate it, and I could believe that the little bird was a sign that things get better.
That despite mornings with 'shoes like make you look like duck' comments and unmade beds, and canvas grocery sacks for lunch bags, that God still provides moments like this for us to cherish.  I am grateful that I could sense the peace that came from being alone in the car on the way home, that I could be with my kids on their short drives to school, and that the sun is out and it is going to be a glorious day.

Prince Rogers Nelson 1958-2016

The death of Prince today was one that completely stunned me. Something about his music typified my high school years. While there was definitely tittilation with the double entendre of his lyrics (tame by todays' standards), there was a spiritual side to him that I also found just as fascinating. He came across as arrogant and hedonistic and narcissistic, but then you read lyrics such as this and realize that maybe, just maybe, he had it all figured out.

Eric Clapton called Prince the best guitarist that ever existed. He definitely appreciated and acknowledged God in his life.
Rest in peace. You will be missed.

Black day, stormy night
No love, no hope in sight
Don't cry, he is coming
Don't die without knowing the cross

Ghettos to the left of us
Flowers to the right
There'll be bread for all of us
If we can just bear the cross

Sweet song of salvation
A pregnant mother sings
She lives in starvation
Her children need all that she brings

We all have our problems
Some big, some are small
Soon all of our problems
Will be taken by the cross

Black day, stormy night
No love, no hope in sight
Don't cry for he is coming
Don't die without knowing the cross

Ghettos to the left of us
Flowers to the right
There'll be bread for all, y'all
If we can just, just bear the cross, yeah

We all have our problems
Some are big, some are small
Soon all of our problems, y'all
Will be taken by the cross

The cross
The cross

Songwriters: PRINCE ROGERS NELSON

© Universal Music Publishing Group

For non-commercial use only.

Data from: LyricFind

Day of Silence

Today is a nation-wide celebration of LGBTQ teenagers in our national public high school system. Since Tank is none of those things, we decided we would just keep this good old boy at home.

But yet this choice opens us up for speculation.

The primary reason I chose to keep him home today though is because he announced recently that he self-identifies as an attack helicopter.

I'm not biased against any of these helicopters, be them of American-descent or otherwise but am praying he identifies himself as Apache.
Because they are just so damn cool.

So until my son gets the support he needs from the LGBTQ community,

or otherwise receives a diagnosis from a psychiatrist convincing me

he is not a delusional young man, we're gonna continue to stay home on these National Days of Silence. He will just have to suffer alone.

Granulated Garlic

One of the more gratifying things about sharing my life on social media is the response I receive from posting stories about my kids. The greatest development in Facebook in my humble opinion is this app "On This Day" where you can access the posts that you made in years past on that particular day (today, April 5th, we have video of Beloved bashing some drums, and our neighbor giving three kids a lift home from school on his motocross bike). In the past I've been able to access the story of how we found our female cat was in fact a male (uncomfortable physical examination performed by yours truly) the story of me getting a pushpin stuck in my foot and Tank replying "Well I was going to put that in my corkboard but since it's been in your foot, I'll pass" or the time that Bumpo hid my birthday gift from Grandma and Grandpa since they sent it so early, and I never received it for my birthday. (Kudos to my father-in-law for calling Eddie Bauer back and apologizing for getting upset with their customer service when he assumed they had never sent the coat).

Raising a family has been overwhelmingly fun, and I have been glad to have shared it with my Facebook friends. This past week I shared a story about Tank engaging in political conversation with a Bernie Sanders supporter, and hilarity ensued. The image of my tow-headed heavily-freckled beach boy trying to educate an elderly man about the idiocy of voting Socialist is still one that brings me a lot of joy. And some people (well really none of my Liberal friends) seem to appreciate the humor.

A close family friend of mine, a longtime friend actually, insisted that I start a YouTube page about my family. Truthfully, I always thought I would love to host a cooking show, see because I don't think everyone would appreciate the earthy, non-pc, loud, never profane but rarely appropriate topics du jour that we confront and discuss over the dinner table.

But a cooking show. A realistic cooking show. A bedraggled woman with bags under her eyes, wobbly arms that waddle when I stir cookie dough, the constant influx of dog and cats (plucking various assorted cats off the kitchen sink who seem obsessed with running water from the tap) dirty floors, sticky surfaces, and crusty kitchen towels. There may be a market for that.

So for example here would be the storyline for this evening's episode.
Mom takes 3lb package of chicken thighs out of the freezer at 11 am to start thawing. By 3pm, the chicken thighs are still clutching one another in an icy embrace. Fine. Take the cast iron skillet and dish drain out of the second sink (their semi-permanent homes), plug the drain and fill the sink with hot water. 2 hours later, press the surface of the packaged thighs. They're soft, but not as soft as I would like, but time is of the essence.

Drain the water, trying to ignore the oily iridescent surface of the water (polystyrene packaging? GMOs? Dirty water? Awww...it'll all bake out). The phone rings (yes dearies we still have a land-line. I like to answer the phone and breathe heavily into the silence before I hear the chatter of background voices and a tinged "Hello?"). Then I hang up 'Click' because I live for the drama.

"TaAank my hands are ooky can you answer it?"
"Mom he wants to know if Dad is available."
"No Dad's not available" (Dad is still at work? Hello?)

Phone call extinguished, and I am left with a plank of frozen chicken thighs that were not as thawed out as I had hoped for. Take my raw-chicken-contaminated left hand, grab the closest sharp knife and start jabbing the chicken meat away from the plastic diaper-liner that food manufacturers soak in water before they freeze it to add to the total weight. Thankfully I thought far enough ahead to place the pan close enough to the sink so I can fling the plank of thighs into it. As I turn to toss out the dripping contaminated Styrofoam packaging of chicken juice, I run into Tank who is (guess what) making himself a bagel with strawberry cream cheese for a 5pm snack. "Excuse me"
"Excuse me"
"EXCUSE ME"
MOM WHAT THE HECK WHAT DO YOU WANT? (arms flung up in the air as we dance around each other in the a 3-ft diameter space between the island and the open frig, which is directly blocking access to the desired trash bin).

I WANT TO THROW THIS AWOUTTTT!!!

Trash delivered without any dripping of the chicken juice.

Olive oil (I'm so flipping proud of myself for figuring out a dinner idea that I start lugubriously flinging olive oil a la Giada. Olive oil drips over the edge of the pan and drips onto the floor. Enter the paper towels.) , poultry seasoning, S&P, where is the garlic? Wash hands. Comb through the contents of my refrigerator, tossing out an empty sour cream container and a bottle of fuzzy-white roasted red peppers (that pisses me off those things are not cheap!) and cannot find any chopped garlic.
Maybe I left it in the pantry. Nope. But there is an open bag of sweet potato chips that have been settled in the backcountry of the pantry since 2015.

Mm they still taste okay though. Toss.

Lower my STANDARDS to use the Granulated garlic I bought from Sam's Club in 2005 and heavily season the plank of thighs. Since my paranoia of E. coli runs strong, I am uncomfortable with handling raw chicken. So I grab a large roast fork, stab the plank and using Geometry try to figure out how to flip over the plank of chicken while still in the pan without a backsplash of oil and seasonings all over my navy blue tunic.
After I successfully turned the plank once, season, and then turn the plank back to skin-up in the baking dish, I set the infected roast fork on the counter.

Ew. Dirty chicken-juice'd roasting fork was set on the countertop.

Aw well. At least the tines aren't touching the surface of the counter.

Halfway through the baking (425 for 5 mins, lower temp to 375 cook for another 50-60 minutes) I check the chicken. The baking process has started to do its magic and the chicken thighs are starting separate. Fork-splitting them apart I see 1/3 of unseasoned chicken flesh, and go back to oiling and spiking the virgin flesh.

So No, I don't think any cooking show would be a raging success.

But maybe a roundtable discussion with Tank and his Millenial-era classmates would be a spicy encounter.

Beijing (Bay-jing)

Coming off the train from Dalian was probably the most overwhelming moment of the trip. Overwhelming can mean many different emotions: joy, sadness, or anger. For me at that moment it meant just overcome. Not with emotion but with the senses-smells, noise and heat.



I have to say that after 25 years of marriage, I have come to appreciate this man very much. He organized a beautiful trip for us in Beijing, where we would end our China journey, and found us a safe clean and luxurious place for us to stay.

and we're walking 

up an escalator

 inclined walkway

twenty minutes later we finally make it outside. We had hired a driver (Thanks Joe the Driver from Harbin!) 

got all our luggage into the back of the van. 

Turned right out of the train station and saw them doing construction on a storefront. #safetyfirst

There are 4 train stations in Beijing. We took the Beijing downtown line. Our driver took us to our hotel, the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel Beijing, which was close to the business district and banking district. The hotel was within a few blocks of the subway.

Beautiful hotel. :)

http://doubletree3.hilton.com/en/hotels/china/doubletree-by-hilton-hotel-beijing-BJSDTDI/index.html

Beloved had reserved a suite for us, with a small kitchen separating the two bedrooms. There was a master suite (above) with full tub and shower in the bathroom. 

Tank was still struggling with a cough/cold and we were grateful that he was willing to sleep on the couch in the living area. I worried that he would keep the girls up with his coughing. 

Girls' room. No tub, but their own shower and bathroom. 

We made it to our hotel and settled in with just enough time to spare to hit the Happy Hour. They had a full, self-serve bar and counters covered in trays of appetizers, cheeses and pastries. So here come the Americans with three kids and we took over the joint. ;) Thankfully few people were left.

After we ate our fill (embarassingly so) we decided we'd take a small tour of our surroundings. There was a lovely garden that had a footpath around the setting, lit by warm lights and with piped-in music. (Not sure what it is with the Chinese and piped-in music they seemingly can't have a beautiful outdoor setting without accompaniment).

On our way back up to our suite we passed by conference rooms. All of them were being used. At one there was a circular table with a man standing in the center of it and an overhead of some equation. By this point it was about 9pm. Businesses were still in conference, having meetings, making ideas. I asked Beloved "When you travel for business, when do you usually quit work?" He answered "Well we usually got out to dinner together. We would never be working together that late."

Not to say American ingenuity is hard at work. He spends many hours in his room preparing lectures and slideshows for his presentations due the next morning.

Off to bed. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day.

Binhai Road

After our tour of 'Venice', Yong collected us back into our van and we trundled off to Binhai Road. The southern coast of Dalian was considered at great risk for naval attack, so the road was built for combat readiness in the 1970s. In the 1980s Deng Xiaopeng chose to maintain the road, except open it now for tourist and travel. Not warmongering :).

We had driven the road earlier in our stay, taking only a few minutes to take pictures and stop for the view. The weather was cold overcast and rainy, and we were all dressed in shorts. Yong promised to take us back later. I'm glad he did.



Binhai Road is extremely congested, with the Tiger Beach Ocean Park and many, many hotels and restaurants along the way. Crowds were becoming de rigeur for our travel, but even this was getting to be a bit too much. We drove out of the city and west along the road.


Downtown Dalian

Traveling west on the Binhai Road

 ceramic cows

love this one of Doe and a large insect (cichlid?) 

Step away. 

Asked Yong to stop so we could walk along the roadway and across a bridge along the coastline.

oh smart sea shell sellers by the seashore! I was entranced. Purchased a large painted clam shell and a large helmet shell. Some of the spines broke off during the travel home :(

Windmills. In the distance you can see the beginning of the supsension bridge, which is to be built across this relatively beautiful bay to cut off 20 minutes of traffic snarl. 

Another view of the Dalian Starwood hotel. 

We ended our day with one last visit to the Dalian Bathing beach. It's a man-made beach and it was relatively uncrowded, due to the afternoon downpour. The beach was fairly small, with a pebble beach, not sand. To the east of the beach was a collection of beachside restaurants, with covered patios and walkways streaming past all of the restaurant choices.

 

By the way I was wearing my swimsuit cover-up all day. I had intended on going into the water, but once I saw how dingy it was I passed. 

After we walked a few hundred feet I witnessed my first food orgy. I wish I could capture the absolute gluttony I saw. I was too scared to take a picture because all of the participants were boisterous, loud and screaming drunk. At a large round table sat about twenty young Chinese men and women, and by 5pm the table was covered in empty beer bottles. There a few men passed out or simply resting their head on their elbows on the table.The men were all wearing white polo shirts, and scattered all around on the floor were stacks 4-5 tall of greasy stained paper plates of rib bones and rinds of watermelon. They were laughing and guffawing, and the protagonist was a heavy-set man with a large belly straining his shirt and highlighting the fresh oily stains of his meal. Something about the noise of screaming and laughing and boisterous Chinese, the sight of so much food being consumed and the absolute filth the participants were wallowing in made me feel ill. Even though the smells of barbecuing beef ribs on the grills were tantalizing, the sight of post-consumption was grotesque. I had initially thought a candlelit dinner on the shoreline eating exotic food with my Beloved sounded pretty much close to perfect, but I changed my mind. 

The social customs of food in China are a little odd for me, just a silly North American gwai lo. It is considered poor manners to not slurp your food as eating, and the noisier and sloppier it is the better. The offering of beer or alcohol by your host is always expected to be consumed. When they started offering Doe (all of 18) round after round of Harbin beers at our bon voyage dinner, I started to really feel awkward. She would oblige, per custom, and the men we were sitting with would stare at her with unwelcome want, and mutter and smile quietly back and forth to each other. I finally had to step in and say 'no more' after about her third round....

Anyway, we left the restaurant area neat the bathing beach, and headed back to the hotel 

Cool tide pools with very pointy rocks.  

All in all not a bad little vacation spot. Dalian was one city I would not mind coming back to.