Snow on Roses

I opened the front door to my elderly neighbor. He was wrapped in scarves and gloves and a hat, and some mighty expensive looking waterproof boots.

"H-hello?"

"Do you have a digital camera?" he asked. His accent is thick and charming, German or Danish or Swedish. (His name is Hans; I can't be too far off.)

"Yes..."

"You must come take a picture off da roses," he pointed toward my side yard. "Der is snow on your roses!"

It was ten o'clock on a weekend morning. I wasn't dressed, the kids were running wild through the house, and well, it looked awfully cold out there. But I told him I'd be right out, threw on a sweater, grabbed my digital camera, and walked out the back door.

Hans met me inside my backyard (he was feeling very at home here)and allowed me to help him down the snowy steps out to the sidewalk where my roses were, indeed, blooming under a blanket of fresh snow.

He pointed to a jaunty clump. "Take a picture of dis one," he said. I did. "And take a picture of dis one, too," he said, pointing toward a lone, sad, rose drooping under the weight of a dollop of snow. I positioned the camera away from my body so I could see through the digital screen. Hans leaned in to get a look at my shot. He held my hand and moved it to where he thought it should be.

"Vould you like me to take it for you?"

"Sure," I said. I handed him my camera. He took it, placed a foot up on the side wall, and took it.

"I have been out here already taking pictures. I didn't vant you to miss it."

"Well, thank you," I said. "I appreciate that."

And I did. It was nice to have someone pull me outside to look at something beautiful. I'm usually the one around here doing that, because I'm such a big sap.

Hans and I stood around for a few more minutes, chewing the fat about my house and the people who lived here before we did. Then I got uncomfortably cold (it was snowing) and promised to invite him in sometime, but not today as I was a little embarrassed at still being in my pajamas. He smiled - his mouth was full of graying teeth - and he said he'd like that.

Maybe he'll point something else out that I've failed to notice.

R.I.P., Crocodile Cafe

Warning: In this post, I will be strolling down memory lane. If you are over 45 or under 30, or don't listen to music or don't live in Seattle, you may find no relevance here. Unless you are a younger parent still wondering how not to become culturally pointless. Then you might relate.

Last night I met my friends Sara, Maria and Sharon for drinks at a new restaurant on Pike Street called Quinn. The surrounding blocks have changed considerably over the past few years. In fact, the place that Quinn now occupies used to be a crappy Mexican restaurant, which has always been rumoured to be so bad that I never felt the urge to eat there, no matter how young, drunk or hungry I was. Quinn is a huge improvement. In fact, most of the changes in that area are an improvement.



Sharon and I continued our quest for more whiskey at the Moe Bar down the block. Moe is part of the music club Neumo's, which first opened in 1994 as Moe. (Between now and then it had a run as an electronic-focused gay boy bar, outside of which I met a sweet cross-dresser named Greg who took me to a drag show at another place that no longer exists.) Sharon and I sat in the bar and recounted the shows we had seen in the club when it was Moe: Pavement. Tricky. Mercury Rev. Modest Mouse. Spiritualized. Superchunk. Will Oldham. Silkworm. The Folk Implosion. 5ive Style. Blues Explosion. Mike Watt.



"I must have seen fifty shows here," Sharon said. Or maybe I said. As I mentioned, there was whiskey.



So it was apropos to open the newspaper today and read that the Crocodile Cafe, Seattle music scene institution for fifteen years, abruptly shut down on Monday. No warning, no reasons given, just shut.

As if I didn't already feel a hundred years old. Now the Crocodile is gone. Like the old Moe, it'll be a memory in the minds of oldsters like me.

Here are some memories I have from the Crocodile: The owners of a coffee house where I worked in 1994 had started their business out of the Crocodile when it first opened, with an espresso cart in the little tiki hut by the front entrance. They were insane. I worked under them for a year in their crappy Queen Anne coffee house with commercial carpeting and lawn furniture and some friend's stuffed animal collection as decoration. They had a newborn and while he was cute and all, I did not have the slightest sympathy for the mother and nothing but disdain for the father. (He slept in a van outside the shop. One of my duties was to rap on the van door at 6:30 after I opened the shop up for the day. Then he would climb out, come in, sit at the bar, and wait for me to make his doppio macchiato.)


I also remember taking my dad, step mom, and cousin to the Crocodile. My cousin was in town and wanted to check out the music scene. Where else would I take him? We saw Mavis Piggot and Modest Mouse. Modest Mouse were just starting to get good shows around town then. They were fresh as daisies, cute as buttons. They rocked us hard. At one point I looked over at my dad, who was leaning sideways from the waist, head cocked, beer bottle aloft, trying to stay upright. My boyfriend and I put him and my step mom into a taxi and said goodbye. We stayed for the rest of the show.

One of my first dates with my husband was at the Crocodile. We saw Lois, an old favorite of mine from Olympia, and Beth Orton. We waited for an hour between sets but it was worth it. Beth Orton and her band squeezed themselves and their instruments onto the smallish stage and blew us away with their beauty.

I saw: Low, G Love and Special Sauce, Unrest, The Band that Made Milwaukee Famous, Joel RL Phelps, Laika, Juno, Smog, Sleater-Kinney, Stereolab. I saw terrible shows that I had to wait too long for, standing in a stuffy, smoky room holding a plastic beer cup. Once, I was hit on, in a very nice way, by two men visiting from Scotland. I was introduced to the writer Rebecca Brown there. I talked to the drummer from Juno there. I saw magic happen onstage there.

I never actually liked being there, though. Something about the feng shui, or the vibe, or the confusing Habitrail-like layout, put me off. If I wanted to drink or eat, I'd go somewhere else.

So I don't actually despair at the closing of the Crocodile. Especially now the the Showbox is hosting such great bands, and Moe is reopened as Neumo's. My life is full of other things now besides hanging out and watching bands, but I am glad there are still good places to see non-mainstream music that aren't total dumps. (Anyone remember The Off Ramp? RCKNDY? Enough said.)

My last memory of the Crocodile: Driving my son's hipster babysitter down there one night after she finished her shift at my house.

"Do you know where it is?" she asked. I shot her a look. "OK," she said as we approached Blanchard on Third. "You can just drop me here."

"It's ok, I don't mind taking you all the way there," I chirped. It was late. She was alone. It was Belltown.

"No, really," she said. "Here is fine."

You embarrassing old person with baby seats in the back of your Saab.

The Purple Lady

As I rode the bus through Capitol Hill to downtown for my jury duty the other day, I felt a sense of joy and calm. I don't know why; maybe it had to do with the divine wisdom of my iPod, which shuffled through fabulous song after fabulous song. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I was getting out of the house and away from regular life for a whole day. Maybe it was because I was bobbing my head to the music and closing my eyes and smiling when a particularly good crash of guitars filled my ears. Whatever. I rode the feeling.


That day people seemed especially irritated to be awake and pushing past other people to find a seat on the crowded, steamy bus. I felt for them. Some of them were probably running late. A few might have been hungover, or wrestling with sadness. You just never know with people. In any case, I turned my attention to my music and folks walking down the street. The bus stopped in front of Seattle Central Community College and I looked across Pine to the loose congregation standing in front of the Egyptian Theater.



People were looking down the hill, toward the bus that may be coming any second. Many wore black. They clutched umbrellas and laptop cases. They looked worried and annoyed. One lady, a middle aged woman with dark brown hair stood out for me. She was wrapped in a big purple sweater/shawl thing, and her expression said that she was glad to be here. She looked peaceful. She looked happy.


She looked so peaceful and happy that I smiled. I continued to look at her, drink her in. Then I beamed her a bunch of love.

Then another good song came on.

It was a good morning.

I told my husband about the Purple Lady over dinner that night and he smirked. To illustrate my feeling further, hoping he might believe these kinds of moments are more than hormonal surges, I recounted a story my teacher has told about such a moment. As she tells it, she drove past a garbage truck one morning and was inexplicably overcome with gratitude. He laughed.

I guess not everyone experiences these moments of unaccounted-for grace.

Try it today. See what happens.

The Finer Points of Breathing and Booty-Building

Yesterday in my yoga immersion class*, after a long discussion of energy channels and muscle alignment, and a hard practice using muscles I didn't know I had, Denise said:

"When your gluteus medius are strong, they act like a Wonderbra for your butt."

Now, I don't have a lot of back. And I would like some more. So this was music to my ears. Additionally, Denise said, "Now those for you who are thinking, well, I just don't have a butt, I will tell you something. Your butt is just depressed. You work these muscles, and you will have a butt."

There's hope for me after all! "Thank you, Denise!" I said. It was sort of like a hallelujah moment. (Not to mention comic relief after the above-mentioned activities.)

Later, my other teacher, Rainey, demonstrated uddiyana bandha - it's this crazy thing you do with your abs and diaphragm, while leaning over, holding an expelled breath, and moving your stomach muscles around in a circle like a revolving door. It's freaky. On her, since she is pierced and tatooed and gorgeous, the act looked freaky and sexual. After she was finished and the rest of us were blindsided with awe (especially me, since I had been kneeling directly below her to get a good view) fellow student Jodi said,

"I can hook you up with some people and you could make a lot of money with that."

This is why I love my studio.

*The Anusara yoga immersion is a series of weekend workshops I'm taking to prepare for teacher training.

SAHM Juror

I took this photo across from the federal courthouse, where I do grand jury duty four times per month for the rest of my natural born life.

Or maybe it's only the next 18 months.

Anyway, whenever people ask me why I didn't try to get out of this rather lengthy commitment to public service, I tell them that I didn't want to get out of it. I love it. Four times a month, I ride the bus downtown during rush hour and feel of a piece with the rest of the world. There is no kid hanging on me, wiping body fluids on me, or asking me questions about the cranes and the tractors outside the window. On those days, I feel like an adult.

Nay, a civilian.

Over a bowl of udon at Red Fin, a fellow juror/SAHM and I shared revelations about our jury experience.

"It's like a mini-vacation from the house," she said.

"I know," I said, slurping my steaming, fat noodles. "And I get to have tofu udon for lunch!"

"Right, like, if I was at home, my kids and I would be eating something with melted cheese on it." She paused. "Though I do realize that maybe it's time to get some new clothes. I think I've been wearing the same stuff since I had my kids. I look at all these other women down here in their fancy little pencil skirts, and I feel like a slob."

I shared that I had recently been bitten by a bit of a clothes bug. I mused it may be that for the first time in five years, I'm not lactating, pregnant, flabby, or constantly being peed on. We looked at each other for a moment, feeling a little happy and proud. Then she rolled her eyes.

"Of course, this might not work out for me for much longer." She described the complicated tag-team game she and her husband play with caring for the children on her JD weeks, for which she has to travel by ferry and long distance and be gone for nearly three whole days.

Well, there's that. For me, though, it's not a hardship because I live right up the hill and I don't have regular paid employment anyway. I am, in fact, a perfect candidate for grand jury service. I cost them very little. I don't have a lot of onerous jury-service forms to be processed like other people do, for their employers, hotel expenses, and mileage.

My only complaint is that they don't pay for child care. I can see how doing so would quickly become a tangled web of liability and fraud, but still it digs a little when out-of-towners get to stay at the Max Hotel, and my per diem doesn't cover the price of a baby sitter. For many women, this would be a major hardship.

And that's too bad, because we all deserve the right to indict pimps and child pornographers.

To Keep Your Side of the Deal

In Seattle, a huge music and arts festival called Bumbershoot heralds the end of summer every Labor Day weekend. It takes over the sprawling facility surrounding the Space Needle and draws 40,000 people per day for three days.

When I was childless, whether or not I should go to Bumbershoot was a no-brainer. I took the bus, paid my money, and stayed all day. I'd hear six or seven bands. I'd drop in on some book readings. I'd wander through the galleries. When I felt like resting, I'd sprawl out on the grass somewhere until I felt like getting up again. I'd come back the next day and repeat.

Everything's different now that I have little kids. If a kid is involved at a big event like this, the time is fractured and focused on food and potty issues. If I go without the family, I'm required to negotiate times and chores with my husband, weigh this activity against other upcoming things I might want to cash in my child care chips for, and shoulder some guilt.

This year the timing wasn't right. It was a busy weekend. I was suffering some kind of mental/physical sickness. It all just seemed like too much of a pain. I decided to forget it.

I was okay with this decision, mostly.

I was okay with it until the last night of the festival, when, while I stirred a pot of Thai curry on the stove at home, a Steve Earle song came over the radio. I rushed to the nearest speaker.

"I love Steve Earle," I sighed to my husband. I turned the volume up, went back to the kitchen, and continued to swoon.

"Never heard of him," said Matt.

"He is a great songwriter. In the 80's he - wait, is this LIVE?"

Matt, sitting in the living room with his laptop, offered to look it up on the KEXP website. "Yep, it's live," he said. "Some private KEXP thing at Bumbershoot."

Motherfucker. I sunk down into a chair beside him. My heart had started to bleed a bit. I got up and turned off the pot of rice. I assembled the kid's quesadillas.

It's okay, I told myself.

We all sat down to dinner. Steve Earle continued to play this intimate show where I was not present. My heart started to bleed more. It was no longer okay.

I dropped my spoon with a clatter. "I really want to go see The Frames and Steve Earle tonight," I blurted.

The bus dumped me at Seattle Center just in time to see The Frames. I nosed my way past casual onlookers into the part of the crowd where people were screaming requests at the band and standing shoulder to shoulder with one another. All I had to carry was my own bag. All I had to listen to was the music. A great tree canopy overhead released a few drying leaves on our heads to memorialize the last day of summer. The sky grew steadily darker.

Glen Hansard, the tall red-headed Irishman capturing our attention onstage, sang about how hard it is to keep your side of the deal. I knew what he meant. I'd been trying all weekend.

Watching Hansard's lanky body jerk and shimmy, hearing him cry "you'll see how hard it can be," gratified about nineteen different desires, and brought to mind the fundemental struggle that is always mine to manage: how do I keep my side of the deal and keep myself at the same time?

Sometimes it can feel as if feeding any need or desire I have will take something away from my babies or husband. It can feel as if wanting to be lost in pure pleasure - like music - is somehow aberrant. This is especially so since my husband and I follow different passions. It feels like if it's purely mine, it can't be good.

I tore myself away to catch Mr. Earle on another stage. He sang of a woman ("Whatsername, wherever the hell she is") who ran wild and disappeared into the sunset on a motorcycle.

I took a cab home, helped with last-minute bedtime water cups and pee-pee trips, and slept beside my domestic husband just like millions of other women were doing that night. I fell asleep thinking about the Whatsername-like woman inside me. She shimmers below the surface most of the time. At times she's so close I think she might take me over. Just noticing her makes me feel aberrant.

Well, I thought, snuggling in for the night, here's one more day she stayed put. Meanwhile, I'm still here keeping my side of the deal.




(Photo by joshc off Frames website. See more here.)

Yoga at Shows

I am a useful person to go to rock shows with. Not only will I drink too much and amuse you, but if you get fatigued by all the standing around, I know Things to make you feel better.

At Silversun Pickups, I did a maneuver on my friend Sara that made her go slack and groan. I stood behind her, bent my knees, grasped the sides of her ribcage, and used my powerful mama arms and legs to lift her spine and decompress her lower back. She did actually groan. Later, when she complained again about her back (because we're getting too old to stand around for hours on end waiting for silly bands to finish whatever they are doing backstage before coming out), I placed my hands on her upper buttocks and squeezed the flesh in toward her sacrum. We've known each other for approximately 57 years, so she didn't mind me touching her butt. Her face brightened. "I feel so much better!" she said.

I learned all this at my prenatal yoga training. I love knowing that I can make someone feel better. Plus, I can make myself feel better.

At The Long Winters, my lower back was killing me. I'd been to the above-mentioned show the night before, and had just done two days of more yoga training. As my great-grandparents used to say, I was tard. I turned to my husband, who is tall and strong and tolerant, and said, "Remember when I was in labor and I hung on you during contractions? Let's do that now." He assumed the position. I faced him, threaded my arms underneath his armpits and up around his shoulders, then let my body hang. I buried my face in his stomach. He stood there and allowed it. Afterwards, a couple about our age snuck sly glances at us. The woman laughed in what appeared to be a knowing way. I bet she was either a mom and knew what I was doing, or she thought I was a tard. I didn't care either way because now I felt much less cranky.

I promise never to do any of this to you unless you ask. You may have to put up with me disappearing into a forward bend every now and then. If I'm there and then suddenly I'm not, just look down. If you are feeling generous, please pull my shirt down over my butt crack. Thanks.

The Downfall of Broadway and Pine

Sometimes after the parent-baby class I take Audrey to, a few other moms and I invade a small grungy pizza joint around the corner with our strollers and small children. We did this today, and since Audrey was clinging to her pizza when it was time to go, I let her walk out of the place holding her food.

While we meandered up Pine Street at a very slow pace to our parking spot where the meter had expired ten minutes ago, Audrey stopped to pick up a flattened, chewed-on red straw off the sidewalk. I batted it out of her hand. "Ick," I said.

Normally, of course, I would direct her to the nearest trash receptacle and give her a big high five for cleaning up. But she was holding food, so my first concern was about cross-contamination. Further complicating matters, no trash receptacle immediately presented itself. From experience I knew that it would take a day and a half to find one at the rate we were going. So I, extremely dutiful citzen though I usually am, left the straw and kept walking.

"There's a trash can right here," I heard a voice behind me say. I turned to see a man bend down to pick up the offending straw.

"Oh, I didn't drop that...she picked it up..." I started.

"Yeah, and I saw you take it right out of her hand and drop it on the ground again." To further prove his point, which must be that people like me are a tragic drain on the patience of others, he bent down and picked up another peice of random garbage (with which I'd had no dealings)and stalked around the corner to deposit it appropriately. "You should show her where the trash can is so she knows where to put her pizza crust when she's done with that," he bitched, sashaying past us in a huff.

I stared at the back of his plaid wool blazer.

How could I explain that we would never waste good pizza crust?

Beer Night

"As soon as I'm a mom, I'm going to be drinking every day." -from hilarious new comedy, Notes from the Underbelly

My friend G and I get together once in awhile for adult conversation away from our four loud children. This usually involves me walking to her house, picking her up just in time for her to miss putting her children to bed, and the two of us walking to a nearby drinking establishment. We call this "Beer Night." The fact that we typically order foofy cocktails and dessert is irrelevant. G is a known lightweight and never drinks more than one beverage. I am a known lush with a sensitive stomach, so I keep it to two.

This Friday, while sunk into an Ultrasuede lounge chair at Liberty, I continued to drink. And drink. They were playing the Pixies and Al Green, for God's Sake, how could I possibly leave? Plus, we were getting into the juicy details of why it is deadly to belong to a social group of women, and how long we dated our husbands before certain relationship milestones were achieved, and other such topics that we mothers rarely have the opportunity to discuss in any depth due to noisiness of the children.

By the time I had reached the bottom of my third Sidecar, I slurred that I hadn't better drink anymore. G was on her fifteenth glass of water. She was ready to go home and probably ready to stop hearing me talk about whatever the hell I was talking about. We parted outside the bar, and, because I had been drinking, I walked over to QFC and bought a pack of American Spirit lights. While walking the ten or so blocks home, in the dark, and smoking one cigarette after another, I began to feel completely bludgeoned by drink. Naturally, I whipped out my cellphone and called a few friends. (One should never, never do this.)

Upon reaching my house, I stripped off my shoes and earrings and handbag and whatever else was on my body, trudged upstairs, and collapsed on the bed.

"Oh, Honey, you don't look good," said my beautiful and saintly husband.

"Yeah, I'n rilly fffucked," I mumbled. "Can I haff a towl a barff on?"

He ministered to me with water ("I need a sippy! I can siddpup. Can I haff a sippy?"), and a towel, and he lay beside me on the bed, chuckling and clucking.

"You're really attractive like this," he joked. I didn't even have the coordination to flip him off. I just had to take it.

I awoke to a rainy morning and a colossal headache. The alarm was going off. I had to get up and take Audrey to The Little Gym. I could not believe this was expected of me. But Matt, well, he was lucky enough to tear some ligament in his knee a few weeks back and so has to be excused form such duties. So I fucking went, in sweats and ponytail and hollow eyes, and took every opportunity to lie down on a soft mat. I began to develop a new understanding of why my parents never did anything like this with me. They were always hungover.

So, I've apologized to G, and the friends I called, and I hope I will remember all of this the next time I'm tempted to drink too much. Clearly my new meds have lowered my tolerance. Not such a bad thing, since I shouldn't really be drinking anyway. Too much alcoholism in my family, plus I'm a depressive, plus I have to get up in the morning and be on my game for the kids. Plus I learned some scary statistics from a psychiatrist I saw over the summer.

More on that later. For now, I must play with Jonah who is whining to be played with (he wears on me like a chronic disease), and shower and serve a nice brunch to my step mom and half brother.

Happy Spring.