But it's half as much as it was before

There is something to be said about just being responsible for yourself.  I just escaped for two days, just me and the old man, no kids, no work, just us and island time.  And bicycles.

Did I mention Island time?

Kelley's Island.  It was wonderful for two days.  We biked the whole island more than once.  Made us wish that we could bike our neighborhood to get places.  Made us real sad that our neighborhood is not bike friendly for living.

Things we did:  had no kids.  So...anything we wanted, pretty much. Which consisted mostly of riding bikes around the island and eating food.  No complaints.  And feel like real people.

I love my kids, but it is just nice to love my husband and love myself every now and again.  It didn't even matter that it was overcast, cold and sometimes rainy.  It was wonderful.  This may be a 'duh' statement but my element is water.  Obviously, I hear you snicker, of course it is, we all knew that.  But, I truly feel so much calmer when I'm surrounded by water.  It's a good fun fact to know.

I had more I wanted to write.  But...I just got off of the water conference circuit, and back from a major mental reset.  I'm pretty blank. And I have one more day of vacation left, part of the back home stay-cation. I'll leave you with a half-ass written blog and some pretty pictures.

Baby, I'm baaaaaackkkk!!

I guess I'm back from a lot of things.  I'm back from a busy summer hiatus.  I'm back from a mommy escape weekend to Portland, Oregon with my bestie Ann.  I'm back to work from just two days off (Portland was a long weekend) and I come back to 6 angry voicemails from people who didn't pay their bills over the last three years and 45 emails.  This is not normal for me.  I guess I was just missed.  And this morning?  You know what I came into this morning?

I'll give you a hint.

I'll give you another hint.  It's 4 feet of not supposed to be here.  Welcome back to work!  

It's always exciting around here.  I am living through the first of hopefully not so many experiences of having to go against my personal morals on a project due to higher-ups.  I am sure it is not the last time and that's a bitter pill to take.  I have a lot of freedom to do what I think is best for the City so I have to just keep doing things that I think make a positive difference and keep working for the greater good as best I can.  

Want to see some photos from Portland?  Course you do. 

McMenamins Crystal Hotel.  

 

Ann and Clarice in our room. Don't look at me like that, Clarice...

Waterfall at the Japanese Gardens by the Rose Test Gardens (which we didn't go to)

Ann at the Japanese tea gardens

Then we went to the Chinese Tea Gardens, it was a tea garden battle royal!

But the Chinese tea gardens actually had teas to drink so they win.  

Ann got the maple blunt and I got the gay bar. 

Then we went to Voodoo Donuts.  They were intense.
Not as intense as the line to get the donuts, though...

Foo Dog in Chinatown

Food carts everywhere.  Seriously, these were the places that I ate the best.  So good....

It was seriously the best food on my trip, and the best pic of the trip.  The best pic, me stuffing my face.  But so happy. 

Treat yo'self!!!!

Just keeping it weird. 

And the kids, holding down the fort at the Cleveland Zoo while mama was out.  

Photos not listed...our kick ass night at the gay bar Silverado.  It was an excellent time.

Thanks Ann for an awesome mama getaway treat yo'self weekend!

Look how pretty she is when she falls down

So, lots of stuff has happened and I haven't had time to write.  I still don't really have time to write but I wanted to do it so I am.  Asher currently has pneumonia and I think I might have gotten it from him.  Or maybe just seasonal allergies that make my throat hurt and my lungs heavy and itchy.  I don't want to go to the doctor.  I always feel like I'm wasting their time, you know?  There are lots of other people who are much worse off than I am.  Anyway, it's obviously a self worth issue that I need to work on. 

So, we went to California a few weeks ago.  It was so nice.  I almost had to throw some punches at the airport due to rude ass bitches and "sequestration" (because we had to fly during the only week of sequestration...).  Cleveland Hopkins airport doesn't have a "family" security lane like most all other airports.  So we ended up waiting in a 2 1/2 hour security line, negating the 2 hours early arrived to the airport.  I asked for the family line and the TSA agent looked at me like I was some type of slime mold on his shoe.  I was sure we were going to miss our flight and I was freaking out a bit.  Asher and Seiry were out of their minds in line, which is why there is a line for families, so other people don't have to be subjected to your horrible monsters when they lose their shit.  Anyway, finally a hospitality guy at the airport grabs me gently by the shoulder and puts us in the "first class" security lane.  We bust through security and run the Lent of the airport all the way down to the gate where our United flight was getting ready to leave. 

Now, I bought a non stop flight with business class seats.  It was more expensive but Ry is tall and I was sitting with a baby on my lap.  I felt my sanity was worth the extra money.  The airline thought we were just throwing money around cause we are awesome.  Not the case.  We get to the gate, the airplane is fully loaded and almost leaving.  "Whoo....just in time" i thought to myself.  Then ryan's ticket beep-booped and the lady told him to go to the desk.  And that lady (who will will call Sassy Sally or SS from here on out) assigned him a seat 11 rows away from me and both kids in coach. 

Here's the dialog:
Me: that's not gonna work.  I paid for extra for these tickets and I am not sitting without you with our kids
Ry: What should I do?
Me: Make her fix it
Ry: We paid for business class
SS: Well, you should have gotten here sooner.  Someone else is in that seat now.

Here is about where my temper was eroded away by security, kids, airports in general, the impeding loss of our flight and one bitchy and unhelpful sassy sally.....

Me: No.  I am not getting on this plane until he is sitting next to me.  No one wants to sit next to me and two kids.  No one.  Believe me.  You are going to fix this.  It's your job.
SS: Do you want me to fix this (as rudely as someone can say this.  The snark level was through the roof:
Me: YES! I do!  (duh?)
Ry: And you can do it without all of the attitude, too. 

She pecked angrily at the keyboard for a while then says "I have to go move the person from their seat".  And I said, " you mean from our seats.  Thanks!"

Oh...the anger.  I was so angry.

Anyway.  Then our flight sat on the tarmac for 30 more minutes due to sequestration (planned waiting) which means that we would have missed our flights had we not been taken out of line by that nice hospitality guy and the plane would have still been there!  FUUUUUUUUU.

California was awesome, as usual.  Too short, though.  I miss the Cali crew bunches already. 

We had this weight loss thing at work, 16 weeks that started back in January.  Unfortunately, even though I ran and lost some weight and got into the best shape of my life (even better than beach body insanity times but only because I did beach body...)I still lost.  I only had 6% body fat loss.  So, sad for me.  But I'm now training to run a couple of 5Ks.  And I have a fitness coach and a nutrition coach.  So, good for me.  I need new goals so I keep running.  I haven't been running this week because my lungs are itchy but I'll pick it up soon. 

Anyway, really gotta go to work.  Later gaters.

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair if you're going to San Fransisco

So, vacation...

Like I said, it was pretty awesome.  We arrived on Jason's birthday (what bad friends, I know, not bringing any gifts)  and just chilled out for the afternoon and then we walked to Castro Street and had dinner.  It was nice.  Ann got to buy some girl scout cookies from a girl walking down the street with a wagon, so that made her pretty happy, too. 

Sunday we went to the farmer's market which was cool.  I wish our farmers markets were like that around here but...I have the CSA so that's pretty cool too so I'm not too jealous.  (sign up for the summer, it's that time of year and spots fill up fast!)  We also took a train from Mountain View to Palo Alto, which almost blew Asher's mind.  He thought it was the coolest, especially it was double decker style and we sat on the top. 

On Presidents day we went to the Exploratorium, a pretty cool museum right in the bay in San Fran.  Seriously, our kids loved it, we aren't just imposing our own love of science and cool stuff onto them.  Asher asked to go back to the museum for the rest of the trip, I kid you not.  He also had a massive meltdown there over a cheese sandwich (welcome terrible twos...), but over all it was pretty awesome.

Tuesday we went to Pinnacles National Monument and had a wonderful picnic lunch prepared by Ann, then we hiked up hill to some caves which were pretty cool.  I'm pretty sure Athena ran the entire time, perilous cliff faces be darned.  She is so daring...Asher made us carry him most all of the time.  Athena touched coyote poop and immediately got her entire upper body disinfected, then we saw the coyote that pooped it out, which was cool (not the touching part and I'm assuming it was the actual coyote and not another, grant me some liberties here).  On the way home we ate in the garlic capitol of the world, Gilroy, California.  The fries weren't as garlicky as I'd like, which was a little disappointing since we were in the garlic capitol of the world, but you know, they weren't bad, either.  Maybe they could tell we were out of towners and toned it down for us.  Maybe they are just tired of garlic...maybe the garlic is just weak because it's out of season and not fresh. 

Wednesday we played it a little more chill and went to Happy Hollows Kiddy Park in San Jose.  A good time was had by all, the place is kind of a mini zoo, a petting zoo and a kiddie amusement park all rolled into one.  And, awesome news was....Cleveland Zoo pass got us in for free!  Rock on, right?  Awww yeah.   Asher and daddy and Jason and Athena all rode the roller coaster.  Did I mention it was like 72 degrees and beautiful?  What a nice day.  And we ended up going to a Japanese noodle house where I got to have the best Kitsune Udon I've had in years.  Even if Asher threw another giganto-tantrum there, I don't care because the food was so good. 

Thursday we chilled at the park in the morning and then the Morrisons delivered us to the airport.  Then our flight got cancelled.  Then we got rerouted to Pittsburgh instead of coming home (snow cancellations in Chicago) but that flight didn't leave for another 3 hours.  So, Ann, being the awesome person she is, came back and got us and took us to San Bruno to a park so Asher could burn off some extra energy.  What a hero, seriously.  Ryan was freaking out massively, too, so getting out of the airport for a while and hanging out with Ann just a little bit more was really nice for everyone involved (I hope I'm not overestimating Ann's enjoyment levels here).  Did I mention it was another beautiful sunny 72 degree day? 

Finally we boarded our flight which was a direct flight so that was nice.  And they put us in economy plus, so that was nice, too.  Asher slept the entire time which was amazing and really really nice for both Ry and me, I watched The Big Year in flight movie, which was okay but not great.  We get to Pittsburgh at 12:42 am, get our rental car and discover our luggage has been lost...well, not lost but it went to Chicago anyway.  So now we need to pick it up tomorrow at Akron-Canton.  Yippie...well, at least we have to go there anyway to get our car, so it's not horrible.  I drive us the whole way home.  It was a little eerie, there were almost no other cars on the highway at 2 am, go figure.

We get home around 3 am, then get up at 8:30 so Ry can get ready for his interview (which went pretty well, considering how tired he was).  I dropped Asher off at granny's house (where he immediately contracted pink eye from Katya) and Ry met up with me and we got an ultrasound (as I mentioned yesterday, a girl).  Then we drove our car back, picked up our luggage and tried to relax for the rest of the weekend. 

Overall, a pretty great trip. 

I'm back...

So, vacation rocked.  It was super awesome.  We had such a good time, the kids had a good time, I think everyone was pleasantly pleased with what a good time had been had.  There's a few quick photos...

Gonna try to to write again tomorrow actually telling you guys what we did and some other stuff as well..ran out of time today.  See you tomorrow. 

Oh, we found out we are having a girl.  You may suggest names.  I don't guarentee we will use them. 


Everyday our kids are shuffling





Hiking along at Pinnacle National Monument on our way back from
seeing the Bear Caves.  It was uphill both ways.  :)



Too much fun....too much fun.



Checking out each other's tickets for the train to Palo Alto

Making sure our kids don't jump to their deaths waiting
for the train to Palo Alto

Asher seems skeptical about that being the actual Golden Gate Bridge

At a really cool sceince museum called the Exploratorium. It was
seriously all Asher could talk about for the next few days of our trip.

Exploratorium again.  What a great museum.

Get on up, get the funk up

Crazy stuff happening here, torrential down pours with insanely loud and long thunder (ry thinks that lightening struck nearby our house, it scared both of us awake immediately this morning while Asher slept peacefully through it), we had a minorly noticeable earthquake here (I was in a conference room which sits over water so we kind of rolled through it instead of shaking through it), unseasonably cool weather, weird stuff. 

Work is trying to ruin the awesome chill I've been having all week after coming back from my vacation.  I'm trying really hard not to let it get to me but...I'm eroding.  Stand tall, lone ranger...

So, I have all sorts of things I have been planning on writing all week, believe it or not.  I know, I was going through a bit of a dry spell for a while.  But worry not. Mildly but not entirely entertaining content is back!

So, in NY I was introduced to catcalling.  I'm assuming that it happens here in the Cleve, too, but I apparently am really really good at blocking it out.  I don't even think I would have noticed it in NY either but I was walking with two other beautiful ladies who, in combination with a third regular-ish looking girl (me), obtained a decent amount of catcalls from all the homies on the block. I think that it's just that I assume that they aren't talking to me.  It's obviously a self confidence issue stemming from years of negative self confidence and guilt for nothing in particular.  I would have made an excellent Catholic.  New career choice, would I look good in a habit?  I'd totally be like all Sister Act up in this career change.

I digress.  I didn't even notice the catcalling the first two days.  I guess guys in NY (and other places I'm sure) do this noise "tsss-tsss-tsss" to try and get you to look at them or something.  Like you are a little kitty cat or something.  Other guys say things like "hey, pretty ladies" or offer to carry something for you or something like that.  It's kind of sweet in a way.  I mean, the normal catcalling isn't sweet, the "tss-tss-tss" isn't sweet but the offering to help a lady is kind of nice.  I still even assumed that most of the time the guys were catcalling to my wonderful friends and not me but, you know, take a compliment where you can get one, right? 

Rachel said that guys will not even try to hide checking out a girl in NY, either. I don't think that they did this to me but I saw a guy check out Rachel once.


And I'm pretty sure a guy tried to shoot a basket for me while playing ball with a bunch of guys.  Well, he said he was shooting a basket for one of us but he pointed, and I thought he pointed to me but he could have ben pointing to Rachel or Ann...either way, he missed the basket though.  He did rescind it and told me the next one he got in would be for me instead.  I didn't stick around to see if he did ever get one in for me.  I like to think that he did.  I am wondering if I never notice catcalling in Cleve because I'm almost always with another guy?  I wonder if I went out with a bunch of ladies (or just one or two) if I would get catcalled here.  I think that if I walked by a bunch of guys in the Cleve playing basketball and one offered to shoot me a basket he would be made fun of by his friends, cause obviously Cleve boys are puerile.  Or are they? 

 

Listen to the wind blow, down comes the night

I know I still owe you a blog post about the nerf war but...I'm a slacker, what can I say?  Here's a quickie about my weekend in NYC with the girls. 

Awesome. 

Okay, return to your regularly scheduled program. 

Seriously, it was awesome.  I feel so good.  I know I was super worried about Asher but, as I was told he would be, he was better than me while I was gone as far as the worry went.  It was all good.  Really. 

This game is called Passage, it was
 the piece that moved me the
most in the entire museum. 

I hung out with two of the best ladies I know for a whole weekend of fun in NYC, eating awesome ethnic foods and walking all over the city, taking public transportation (one of my favorite things to do when I go to the city, honestly), seeing the sights and people, listening to good music and generally being in good company.  I felt like a real person again.  We went to MoMA (where we all decided that our children could be actual contenders for professional acclaimed modern artists) and were really awed and wowed by the Tech exhibit called Talk to Me (it's on the third floor).



We walked through China Town and Little Jamaica (where we had vegan Jamaican food).



vegan Jamaican food...yum...



We walked around Brooklyn at night to look at the city across the water. We also saw a weird band playing in Brooklyn inside a building with a creepy freaky guy (or mannequin) just staring at me around the cacophony dressed in a white suit.  He and I were staring each other down.  Grr...

Manhattan across the river.

We walked around 5th Ave (we just happened to be there...), found a random street fair, bought a dress and went to a fine dining vegan restaurant that was a little hippie-tastic but good called Caravan of Dreams and then had Sangria at a cheesy little Mexican restaurant called Hotel Tortuga  (they were super nice and let us eat our bakery food with our Sangria even though they had their own desserts) late into the night on a Saturday night in Manhattan.  



Awesome old abandoned movie theatre in Little Jamaica. 

You know I'm bad at taking photos.  I'm gonna steal more from Ann when she gets them to me to post on here.    





I'm gonna marry the night

So, instead of bitching about how stressful my job is already this morning (just know it is), I'll tell you about almost getting pee on me in San Fransisco.  It's a good story. 

I tried to draw a comic of this but it's taking too long, perhaps I'll finish it tomorrow and post it. 

So Ann and I are walking all around Mission Street in San Fransisco, just being two trendy and awesome chicas.  We decide to go to a El Salvadorian place to eat some papusas.  So we go into a random restaurant and sit down at a sort of cleanish table.  The waitress comes up to us and shoots off some rapid Spanish.  I'm at a loss (it's been like 8 years since my last Spanish class), so thankfully Ann has some Spanish under her belt.  She translates the question to me, what kind of juice, tamarino, orchard or pineapple.  The lady speaks no English at all.  I'm not sure how she can work in a restaurant in SF without marginal English but she does.  Or maybe she was just refusing to speak to us in English, I don't know.  Either way, Ann helps me remember some of my Spanish and we both order papusas, mine with puerco and frijoles and hers with queso y frijoles.  She makes it a big deal, saying "sin animalia" and asks if they use lard ( I don't remember the Spanish for it).  The waitress says, no, no, no animalia.  Good. 

We get our papusas a little bit later (eat them with plantains, which I've never had before, AWESOME!!!!) either way, mine was fine but Ann gives me a funny look and a piece of her papusa.  "Is this meat?" she asks me.  Why, yes, it was.  Way overcooked chicken.  So we get the reluctant waitress to come back over and ask her if this is "pollo"? "Si!" she answers enthusiastically.  Ann sighs, points to herself and says "vegetarian".  The waitress brings her a new papusa.  Most of the rest of it was uneventful.  Btw, thanks to Ann for buying my lunch, I owe ya one!

So we are walking back up Mission St carrying our leftovers and heading towards Om Shan Tea, the teashop we were going.  We saw trannys, prostitutes, crazy homeless guys and other colorful SF Mission St residents.  One homeless guy (this was on our way to the papusa place but who cares about a timeline, really?) points to me and says "America's!" then points to Ann and says"TOP" and points to himself and says "Model!" Then goes and talks to a prostitute.  It was interesting. 

Anyway, an old guy was pushing an older guy down the street in a wheel chair, ignoring all the traffic laws and pushing him out into oncoming traffic.  He ends up getting ahead of us because of this (cool chicas don't violate traffic laws!) and I don't think anything of it.  Ann and I are totally having cool chica talk going on, minding our own business when I look over to my right randomly.  There are all these trees planted on the sidewalks next to the road and the wheel chair pushing dude totally flashes me his ass and his tucked jewels and staff and pees backwards on a tree.  If you didn't get that, he is bending over, facing backwards, spraying a tree with his urine with his ass hanging out and his cock and balls tucked backwards giving me quite a show and almost giving me a quick golden splatter. 

I make some type of expletive and jump back against Ann who was unsuspecting and didn't have her eyes scarred by this unique event.  Thank goodness one of us was able to be spared.  It does make a good story, right?  I actually like that crazy stuff happens every now and again, it makes the trip more memorable.

Most of the rest of the trip was mostly uneventful, we went to the tea house which was awesome, it was totally Tibetan Monk themed, there were no products served that monks wouldn't eat, so no soy, nuts, sugar, processed foods, nightshades, some other things.  I really liked it.  And the lady working there who's name was Ash, totally a hippie but she didn't smell like a hippie so that was good, was totally awesome.  She was super nice and helpful and made us feel totally comfortable and welcome.  It was so nice.  I think that Ann and I really were able to talk with each other and feel super relaxed and unpressured.  I honestly feel that we bonded more during our Mission Street expedition than the whole rest of our trip so I'm really happy we went. 

Oh, we didn't have any children, either, the dads took them to a really cool children's museum under the golden gate bridge.  I'll post pictures of that soon, I promise.