Kathryn
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Kathryn" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
|
11:10 am
[Link] |
The Popular Monsters
My brother, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) daspatrick, is a . . . well, let's just say he's a ridiculously cool individual. I have a whole set of anecdote fragments that I tell to try and convey to people how cool he is without monopolizing the conversation, including the fact that he drove across Asia in a tiny car, that when he was 17 we had UWTV on pretty much constantly because they had a feed from MIR and he had a crush on one of the cosmonauts, that he makes movies sometimes. . . and that he's in a band, the Popular Monsters.
Now, first of all, let's ignore the fact that I have the MySpace page up to link to it, and it started playing Turtle Rock and Lily FREAKED OUT with joy and began to dance wildly while wearing Erik's hiking boots, and how cute that must be. (although I tell you, it's pretty damn cute.) Patrick does most of the songwriting for the band, and as someone who's always fancied herself to be moderately musically talented, it drives me to sick jealousy that he is as good a songwriter as he is. Liberty Lake is a really good encapsulation of that weird period in a group of friends' lives where everything is kind of awesome but it's becoming brutally clear that something's going to change pretty soon; No Love for Plants and Cats is a sweet, sad eulogy for a relationship that ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.
So, anyway, hit the MySpace page and give them a listen, will ya? Maybe then you can realize the Coolness that Is My Brother too.
Tags: family, music, patrick
|
|
04:06 pm
[Link] |
when suddenly, she was moved to cook
My mother's been here for a week, and it's been fantastic, because she does all this fabulous cooking. Well, it got to the point where I realized how much I like having real food around, and since Mom goes home today, I'd better get some of it made myself! So Lily and I went out to the farm to get eggs; Lillian went wide-eyed at the chickens both before and after learning that if you stick your fingers through the mesh, they will bite you. Then I got day-old bread, frozen chopped spinach, and scallions, as well as a roasting chicken and some granny smith apples and some sausage. The sausage is browning right now with the chopped apples and some chopped fresh rosemary; when that's done, I'll add a cup of rice (we have this yummy white / brown / red / wild rice mélange) and about a cup and a half of water or stock, and let that cook until the rice is parboiled, then stuff the chicken with it and roast it along with some cauliflower, and maybe steam some brussels sprouts or something to go with.
But before doing that, I made two savory bread puddings with duck eggs, one with ham, cheddar, scallions, and parsely and one with turkey, parmesan, scallions, and basil. When exactly I'm going to bake those, I'm not sure! But the upshot is that now we'll have lunch for a week and dinner for a couple of days at least.
Tags: cooking, family, food, recipes
|
|
08:41 am
[Link] |
General Update
Wow, Lillian is totally walking now. She started walking about a week and a half ago, and I've just been too busy chasing her to update. She still falls down all the time, but she makes pretty good time. Now I need to get her shoes with treads on them. *snif* my little baby, growin up.
She also has a TERRIBLE cough right now, for like the fourth time this winter, complete with fever and retracting, so we have a doctor's appointment this afternoon, which is super annoying because I'm still trying to go to the Garden Show with solarbird. Everyone assures me that it's just fine for little kids who play with other kids all the time to get sick this often, but I feel so bad for her.
In other time-consuming news, we're performing the B-Minor Mass with the Symphony. Now, the last time the Chorale performed this s work, we had 18 rehearsals for it. This time, we have 11 rehearsals, and one of them got snowed out. So we're kind of in the weeds with this. Monday's rehearsal was like masturbating with a belt sander -- "Ow! This is supposed to be fun! I do this for fun! Why does it hurt so much?!" There's just a lot of notes, and a lot of parts -- it's 5 part chorus for most of it, and 6 and 8 part sometimes -- and it's long, like 2.5 hours long.
In addition, we had the brilliant (seriously) idea to split all the women equally into 3 parts for the SSATB stuff, which is good because then we don't have to maintain a huge-ass soprano section for the rest of the season. The problem with this is that the soprano II part is really almost as high if not just as high as the soprano I part, and the alto part is quite low, so for those of us who are floating, the range of the piece covers 2 octaves plus a third. I've forgotten how to transition well into my head voice for choral singing, though I'm remembering, and as a result the rehearsals are very vocally fatiguing for me. I need to practice more, but the only solid focus time I get is when Lillian is asleep, and it's hard for me to sing full-voice without waking her up. What I need to do is knuckle down and practice more when Erik is home, but I value my time with him so much.
I took 2 days off to go to the Madrona Fiber Arts festival and take a two-day class with Nancy Bush and Judith Mackenzie McCuin on gloves, mittens, and other handcoverings -- the history, construction, and spinning of yarn for them. To say that it was a fun class is a complete understatement. I had a hell of a time, I learned an absolute ton, and I am now fired up beyond belief to knit enough gloves to keep everyone I know's hands warm.
I think that's the news from Lake Burning Hand right now. I'll let y'all know if I think of anything else.
Tags: family, health, illness, knitting, lillian, music, singing, spinning, symphony, wool adoration
|
|
12:56 pm
[Link] |
I am so proud of my daughter
When Lillian was walking around on Wednesday, she slipped, tried to catch herself on the edge of a basket, and ended up coshing her face on it, badly. She had a big scratch and a welt that I was sure was going to bruise, though it didn't. She cried for about four seconds, and then stood back up and kept trying at it.
She was as sick as a damn dog yesterday, and in the middle of it, still managed to spend some time playing with her little farm, saying "Happy Happy Happy."
We're no longer actively sick today, but we're both still very weak, and yet all she wants to do is run around. She can't, and it's so frustrating to her that she just cries while pointing at the floor. But she can still cheer up to watch Teletubbies, and even signs along with some of it.
and then, when I succumbed to the inevitable and put her down for a second nap only an hour after she woke from the first, she signed "all done hurt." She is so tired of being sick. And yet her amazing, fantastic, utterly indefatigable spirit just keeps shining through. I'm so impressed with the way she can soldier on through adversity. I'm so proud to be her mother.
Tags: family, lillian, love, sick
|
|
09:21 am
[Link] |
Good and Bad
Good: Flight yesterday from SEA to STL on-time and pleasant.
Bad: flight yesterday from STL to CDR cancelled.
Good: Old friends of my family's put us up for the night in St. Louis, complete with facilities for Lily.
Bad: The next flight they can put us on is tomorrow.
Good: Because they are prioritizing empty seats on flights today for soldiers home on leave who got fucked by the massively huge weather delay.
Good: We can rent a car one-way with no drop fee!
Bad: It's a five-hour drive.
Good: But ONLY five hours.
Bad: Lily woke up every two hours all night long.
Good / Bad: As I type this she has been asleep for four hours and shows no signs of waking.
Good: I have coffee and OJ and a shower and my husband is a rock star and the car we are renting will have a GPS and a five-hour drive is not SO bad in the scheme of things.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Tags: airports, coffee, driving, family, flying, lillian, soldiers, st. louis, travel, weather
|
|
10:08 am
[Link] |
yesterday is fired.
Lillian is still sick. I caught her cold, and I was sick. I had one of tWO rehearsals for B9, and we were getting new music, so I HAD to go to chorus rehearsal. Just as I was getting Lily down for her afternoon nap so that I could shower and eat before Erik got home, he called -- his bike light was burned out and he needed me to come get him. Great. Pile into the car with unhappy babe, I'm filthy, still in bedroom slippers. Go get Erik. Get bike loaded on top of the car, despite Erik's fucked up wrist and the cold. Drive into town. Look around for dinner, settle on getting something from the Metropolitan Market. Drive into their OPEN AIR PARKING and
CLANNNNNGGGGGGG THUNK
They have a totally unnecessary architectural gate, with a totally unnecessary steel plate hanging down from it by two and a half feet, and this has struck Erik's bike and knocked it over. Now it's dangling over the side of the car and I am in the middle of the parking lot and Erik has to scram and hold the bike up to keep it from damaging itself further -- this is his $2500 custom bike -- and he's left his passenger door open, and there are people coming and going out, and this is on Queen Anne, and everyone is very annoyed but NOBODY IS FUCKING OFFERING TO HELP. And so Erik is taking down his suddenly non-Euclidean bike, with one hand, in the freezing cold, as people are coming ohsoveryclose to hitting him with their fucking great cars, and he has to get it into the trunk, and then I STILL have to get dinner -- which I did -- and then Erik took me to rehearsal, which was really good, because we got new music and I would have been up shit creek without a paddle had I not been there
and then halfway through rehearsal I started running a fever and I had to have erik load Lily BACK up into the car and come get me.
FUCKING YESTERDAY. FIRED.
the ONLY good thing is that at no point did Erik and I start screaming at each other.
Tags: family, food, lillian, music, petty first world problems, singing, symphony
|
|
12:49 pm
[Link] |
In-laws update
My sister-in-law and her family are back home, safe and sound. Joe got back into the country because my FIL's wife called a contact of hers in the State Department and got a special affidavit of citizenship, and diplomatic permission to enter the country. nice to have friends in high places. The airline is still acting like it's not their problem, and has not lifted a single finger to help them or remunerate them for the cost. In fact, they tried to charge them $100 each to change their flight dates! They spent over $200 in cell phone minutes trying to sort everything out, had to stay an extra day in Mexico, and almost had to fly to Guadalajara or Tijuana on their own dime to see the consulate and then -- get this -- DRIVE HOME. All on their own dime.
They're pretty mad. They plan to call customer care today and ask for 5 free tickets, reimbursement for the cell phone minutes, reimbursement for the passport re-issuing, and, I dunno, a fruit basket or something. If they don't get any satisfaction from the airline today, they've asked me to call the paper.
Tags: airlines, family, mexico, travel
|
|
08:39 am
[Link] |
Home again. Also, Alaskan Airlines sucks leprous donkey balls and don't fly them.
So, we were in Mexico, which was awesome, except that Lily cut her fourth tooth halfway in, which was not awesome, and then started running a 102 degree fever that continues to this day, so I have a doctor appointment at 11 AM. The hotel doctor couldn't find anything wrong with her, and she responded to Tylenol, and had fun still in the pool, and we had a lot of family around, so that was not as bad as it could have been.
What was EVER SO VERY MUCH WORSE was what happened at the airport! Lily's Tylenol was wearing off as we were getting there, and we were in a hurry to get checked in for our flight, so we were putting off dosing her until we'd been through security. We were traveling with my sister-in-law Kaari and her husband Joe, and their three children. When the Alaskan Airlines fixer saw the size of our party and the fact that we had an increasingly sad baby, she waved us over to the Agent Assistance line. They searched ALL our bags, no X-ray, and then we handed over our passports and our tickets so that we could get checked in. The ticketing agent did a roll call of all eight passports, printed us out eight boarding passes, and handed us back seven passports.
. . . yes, really. As soon as the passports were back in Kaari's hands, she started distributing them, and we IMMEDIATELY discovered that her husband's passport was missing. I mean, we were still standing on the same linoleum squares we'd been standing on when we handed them over, Joe's arms were still resting on the ticket counter. We searched everyone's carryon, we searched everyone's pockets, and the ticket agent got increasingly flustered and defensive and kind of wanted us to go away. I went and got the airport security people and told them we had a missing passport, everything suddenly got extremely seriously focused, Lily was in full teardown hysterical screaming, it was hotter than Hell and half of Georgia.
The airport security people took apart the ticketing kiosk and looked all through all the machinery -- nothing, not there. The security folks searched the area behind the counter, nothing. We turned out our pockets AGAIN, and then for everyone's sake, they sent me and Erik and Lily along. After we got through security, the airline fixer found us again and apologized deeply and asked if she could do one more carryon search, because they weren't finding Joe's passport anywhere. And we unpacked everything we had with us and spread it out on the floor of the Puerto Vallarta airport while she bounced Lily and tried to soothe her, and then she felt inside every pocket, every seam, every piece of everything, looked inside every (clean) diaper, and found nothing.
There were five empty seats on our flight back to Seattle. I found out from some other passengers that they had actually told Joe he could board, and then at the last minute yoiked them out of the line and pulled their baggage off the flight and turfed them out of the airport -- at 4:50 PM on a Friday -- and left them to go find the consulate to get everything sorted. Fortunately my father-in-law and his wife were remaining in Puerto Vallarta for an extra week, so they at least had someplace to go.
What I know right now is that 1) there are now two rooms booked under my father-in-law's name at their hotel and 2) nobody is home there. I presume they're getting it all sorted. Man, what a nightmare.
And now, a poll!
Poll #1086256
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllWhat happened to the passport?
I am really ticked at the way Alaskan handled this situation. Not just the loss of the passport, which could have conceivably been innocent, but also the way they just hung Kaari and Joe out to dry.
The trip, believe it or not, was actually a lot of fun. We have cutie-pie pictures of Lillian playing in the wave pool!
Tags: airlines, family, lillian, mexico, travel
|
|
07:43 pm
[Link] |
CIO update
Last night we were doing the extinction CIO again, when we heard a sickening *THUMP* from the nursery. We ran frantically in there, only to find poor Lillian on her back -- she had pulled herself to stand, but was so tired she lost her balance and fell over and cracked her head against the slats of the crib. Erik snatched her up and I kissed and consoled her, and decided right then and there that I was DONE with CIO. I figured I'd go out and get the No Cry Etc Etc today.
Well, this morning I tried putting her down for a nap literally five times. Five times! Every single time she was screaming before she even touched the mattress -- by the end she was screaming as soon as I opened the door to the nursery. I assume she'd made negative associations with the nursery because of all the wailing. So I decided to break that negative association before I tried anything else, and we did kind of a reverse CIO -- we went into the nursery, and I put her standing up in the crib and we played Patty Cake, and then I took her out. Twenty minutes later, we went into the nursery and I stood her up in the crib, read her the Hippo book, and then took her out. Fifteen minutes after that, we went into the nursery and I stood her up in the crib and we shook our maracas! Ten minutes later, etc. etc. etc.
Pretty soon she was rubbing her eyes and yawning, so we went back in and I put her in the crib standing and we did the Hippo book three times running. Then I sat her down and read her two books while I was standing up, showing her the pictures. Then I got down on the ground so she couldn't see me, drew up a stack of books, and read aloud for a solid half hour. During that whole time she fussed and whined but didn't actually cry. After that half hour, though, she was so tired that she just pitched forward onto her face and began to wail with exhaustion, so I closed the books and started to sing lullabies to her. After ten minutes of singing, she was fast asleep. She woke up as I was leaving because the phone rang, but she cried for about fifteen seconds and then went back to sleep.
And slept for two and a half hours.
She woke up in a GREAT mood, and we played and had fun and did all kinds of neat things. But when I noticed her yawning and rubbing her eyes again (four hours later), we went back to the crib, and did Hippos and Goodnight Moon standing up, and then Polly's Picnic and Strega Nona sitting / lying down, and then she was awake but drowsy and happy so I crawled out the door and left her, and she hasn't made a peep.
I feel awesome, like SuperMom, like the best mother EVAR. Turns out if I'm in there reading to her then she can wind down on her own! Oh please oh please oh please let this continue. . .
Tags: best mom evar, family, lillian
|
08:55 am
[Link] |
One more vacation / family story
My grandmother, as I have mentioned is 91. Also she is awesome and made of win.
She said to me and Erik, "As I age, I begin to contemplate the disbursement of my estate. For example, to whom should I bequeath my large collection of hats?" (My grandmother really talks like this. After spending a week with her, I start to talk like that too.)
Erik and I: *polite noises*
Grandma: "Each recipient has to be carefully chosen. It would be a terrible shame if the wrong person ended up with my bright orange hunting cap which reads, emblazoned across it in large black letters, 'DON'T SHOOT, ASSHOLE.'"
Erik and I: *fall over laughing*
I badly want that hat, even though it would be better off going to someone who lives in hunting country. But really I want it just so that when people say "Where did you get that hat?" I can say "My grandmother left it to me."
Tags: family
|
|
11:48 am
[Link] |
Another vacation anecdote
Context: we are talking about physics, or physicists, or something.
My mother: "You know, we have a picture of Enrico Fermi up here --"
daspatrick and I, internally: "We have so many god damn photographs lying around this place, why is Enrico Fermi special?"
My mother: " -- sitting on our beach."
daspatrick and I, simultaneously: "Wait, what?"
Yeah. Apparently, Fermi made a visit to my grandmother's place at least once. (She and my grandfather were both professors and hung around a lot of high academia, so it wasn't COMPLETELY unlikely.)
Tags: family
|
09:16 am
[Link] |
I'm tinyfamous!
I've just gotten back from visiting my grandmother and other extended family Yea Unto The Fifth and the Sixth Generations in Michigan. (A hundred years ago, two brothers bought a ton of property on the shores of Beautiful Crystal Lake (murderous psychopath not included) in Beulah, MI. All their descendants have places there now, either individually or shared, and a lot of people live there year round.) (Ask me about the oatmeal feud sometime.) Anyway, there was a party that my grandmother was at -- have I told you about my grandmother? She's ninety-one. Not only does she live independently, she still works -- writes, edits, lectures, travels all over doing research and giving expert testimony. She's as sharp as a box of tacks and funny as hell. Anyway, my grandmother was at this party, and there was a woman wearing a hand-knitted shawl.
"You know," said my grandmother, "My granddaughter has an article about shawls in the current issue of Spin-Off magazine -- do you know Spin-Off?" (My grandmother only knows the magazine because I was published in it. She has a copy of the magazine on her front table with "SEE KATE TEWSON'S ARTICLE PAGE FORTY" written on the front in permanent marker.)
"Do I?! I'm a member of our local spinning guild!! Which article? Imping Julia?"
And that, my friends, is how I ended up presenting the blue water shawl that Emma knit and being the guest of honor at the Benzie County Spinning and Knitting Guild meeting the next monday. They all wanted me to sign the article. It was weird. Also very cool. A lot cooler than it was weird, actually.
Tags: family, tinyfamous, wool adoration, writing
|
|
08:51 am
[Link] |
My life is awesome.
I'm sitting here drinking a wonderful cup of tea and eating oatmeal with bananas and cream. I'm wearing the fleecey slippers and warm snuggly robe my husband got me for Christmas. That self-same husband is holding our daughter as she sleeps in his lap, after an invigorating morning conversation (new word: "booyah") and five minutes of trading smiles. And that self-same daughter slept from 11:30 PM to 5:45 AM, which can be reasonably understood to be "through the night."
This is the best of all possible worlds.
Current Mood:  wonderful
Tags: family, lillian
|
|
08:13 pm
[Link] |
By popular (well, singular) demand
Lillian and llachglin, today, on her one month birthday:
What a cutie pie. Sadly in this picture you cannot see the adorable booties she's wearing, which jessicac bought her, which I think look like bears and Erik thinks looks like dogs, and which (best of all) STAY ON. They stayed on all night. ALL NIGHT LONG. That's a frickin miracle kids.
Tags: family, lillian
|
|
06:25 pm
[Link] |
It's a Girl
a happy, healthy, human* baby girl.
Yay. :-)
* We specifically had the sonographer confirm the absence of horns. There are no horns. No cloven hooves either.
ETA: Suggestions for names are welcome. Erik has pre-emptively rejected all names that he qualifies as "trendy," "musty," or "Biblical."
ETA2: Wanna see a picture?
Tags: family, sprout
|
|
03:21 pm
[Link] |
For Erik
Happy anniversary, babe. Every damn day, I wake up more and more grateful that I found you. Not everyone would have thought that an interpretive dance about nachos -- a Nacho Hula, if you will -- was as funny as you did.
I'd say our wedding day was one of the best days of my life, except that every day since then has been better than the one before. Let's see if we can't keep that up.
Current Mood: twoo wuv
Current Music: Augusta Read Thomas: Love Songs
Tags: family
|
|
12:43 am
[Link] |
Valentine's Day, Observed
So, Erik and I did indeed go down to Pike Place Market and buy all the things for our tasty and delicious dinner. Fresh morels aren't in season yet, so we bought some dried ones instead. The sum total of the dinner is:
Bay Scallops baked with Raclette and Creme Fraiche: Holy Moses this was good. It makes about one-half-cup per person, which is absolutely just right as a starter. The sharpness of the cheese and the sweetness of the scallops complemented each other beautifully. Served with cheap champagne, as it's the only kind we can afford.
Morel and Asparagus Salad: Another big winner, despite us forgetting that we were making a half-recipe when it came time to add the dressing. Again, I can't believe how well the morels and the asparagus complemented one another. SO good.
Roast Rib Steak with Chanterelle Mushrooms, Bordelaise Sauce, and Pommes Anna: This one was straight out of the French Laundry cookbook my brother got me for Christmas. After actually having used it to cook a recipe with, I'm pleased to say that while the recipes are very complex, the directions are VERY clear and straightforward. Pommes Anna is a dish made with layers of potato slices alternating with layers of prune sauce (!) made with prunes stewed in chicken stock and mixed with shallots. I was highly skeptical, but hot DAMN it tastes good. Except that the bottom layer stuck to the dish I baked it in, so it didn't have quite the gorgeous presentation I was looking for. And we accidentally overcooked the meat to the point where it was definitely medium rather than medium rare, which left it a bit worse for the wear, but it was still extremely tasty and very very good.
Banana Splits: Erik couldn't believe how easy the fudge sauce was to make. We were so excited about these that we took WAY too large servings and ate until we were rotund and groaning. So. Good. And so much fun, too.
After we were done, we looked at the whole thing in hindsight and said "I can't BELIEVE we managed to cook a meal that complicated!" I absolutely couldn't have done it without him -- I doubt either one of us could have done it alone. What a great Valentine's Day.
Current Mood:  full
Tags: cooking, family
|
|
10:45 pm
[Link] |
Oh
and my grandmother told stories of when she was one of the three first female airline ticketing agents that American Airlines ever hired, and how the executives discussed at length whether it would destroy the public's confidence in air travel if they bought their ticket from a woman, and how when she was 18 (in 1935) she travelled all over the country speaking to organize a campaign for total disarmament, and even spoke to the American Legion, who were so poleaxed that they asked her to stay and play poker with them afterwards.
Tags: family
|
08:44 pm
[Link] |
How was your Christmas, Kathryn?
Wonderful! We all got lots of presents, and then we ate dinner, and then we came back for dessert and my grandmother announced that she would love some Christmas pudding "but I am having difficulty arranging myself into an L-shaped position on account of my previous indulgence." And then we sat around and argued about various systems of weights and measures.
Tags: family
|
|
12:51 pm
[Link] |
Iowa!
I'm in Iowa! My parents' house is GORGEOUS, and they've put me in a lovely room on the lowest level that's not only very private, but is RIGHT NEXT to the bathroom with the jacuzzi tub and the sauna. That's a very good thing.
Security is very tight now. It took me about 45 minutes or an hour to get through. Mostly this was because I made some mistakes; I wore my steel-toed boots, which got me sent over to the secondary search area, where I got more carefully wanded and patted down than I ever have before in my life. The woman was very professional and courteous, but she really checked me thoroughly. The wand was very sensitive; it went off individually for every one of the grommets on my boots, every one of the snaps on my pants, and for the safety pin holding my bra together, which she felt for and identified. Then I had to take my boots off and send them through X-ray and chemical detection. Then my frob (portable MP3 player) got me sent to the tertiary search area, which is in the back behind a screen where all the guys with guns are. They took it out of the case, found the FCC ID#, looked it up in a database to make sure it was what it said it was, checked the battery compartment, then made me prove that it played music. Whew! I was mostly in very good humor during the whole thing though; I mean, they're just doing their jobs, and if I'd been thinking, I wouldn't have worn steel-toed boots.
On the first leg of the trip down, i sat next to a guy who identified as a conservative Christian, and we talked about the war in Afghanistan all the way down. Surprisingly, we had very similar views on the subject. Then during the layover, there was a small (~18-month) boy in the terminal who was really on the thin vibrating edge of exhaustion, but didn't want to go to sleep -- he would sort of fall over and cry for about 45 seconds, then get up and explore something new, then fall over and cry, then get up, etc. About an hour into the two hour layover, he came over to me, looked right in my eyes, and did "up arms." So I picked him up -- his parents were right there -- and he put his head down on my shoulder and fell immediately asleep. The parents and I chatted a little, and they offered to let me hold him all the way to Cedar Rapids (ha!), but after about five or ten minutes, he woke up and reached for his dad, who took him and said, wonderingly, "What on earth were you doing? You don't even know that lady!"
Mom picked me up at the airport and took me to their beautiful airy gorgeous house, and I did some knitting and helped them hang ornaments on the tree, and then went downstairs and slept like a DEAD THING. I pretty much just re-entered the land of the living recently.
Tags: family, travel
|
[<< Previous 20 entries] |
5 (13.9%)