That'll be the day

My father had always been...not a hypochondriac, exactly, but something of a fabulist--given to embellishment, in things medical and otherwise. Oh, he was always having something stitched up or snipped off or blasted with lasers, in the last decade or so; he weathered dramatic and vaguely suspect injuries, and their equally spectacular remedies, with vividly described aplomb. For years, I'd been wanting to say You pulled what doing what, now? and Put the doctor on, I want to talk to him. So when the fire department chaplain called Tuesday evening, I was very slow to catch on. He said things like, We found your father in his shop, and collapse, and finally that he was sorry, we didn't get there in time. And I, I said mostly Yes? and Oh? and Yes? and I was waiting, honestly, waiting for final instructions--what hospital was he at? was I supposed to go pick him up?

Oh, I said, again, at last. Oh.

* * * * *

I posted the obituary notices to four papers this afternoon, the gentle facts, the list of survivors. I'm writing this one for me.

* * * * *

I was not an accident. My parents had been married for three years, though they were still ridiculously young. This is the first picture I could find, of me with my dad, of all of us together. I am two weeks old; he is 25, my mother 22.

I look at this picture and think, here are three babies. All of us look apprehensive. A month later, we are marginally more confident, but still, this? is the face of a man who doesn't much know what the hell he is doing.

Though, also, maybe he's just woken up.

* * * * *

As far back as I can remember, the common thread between me and my father was music. When I was still in footy pajamas, he'd play his guitar and sing me to me, mostly Johnny Cash. Not necessarily the best toddler lullabies, those prison laments and hard-drinking tales, but the one I remember specifically is "Ballad of a Teenage Queen."

There's a story in our town,

'bout the prettiest girl around,

Hair of gold and eyes of blue,

and what those eyes could do to you.

He worked my name into the lyrics, coupled it somewhere with a rhyme for Kimberly. Even at three, I was aware that I was neither blonde nor blue-eyed, and was a little bothered by it. At any rate, I didn't remember anything past this verse. When, 30 years later, I bought a giant CD compendium of early Johnny Cash, I played that one with dread. Didn't all his songs end up with someone on the wrong end of a gun barrel or a blade? But no! After a spin through the Hollywood machine, the Teenage Queen shrugs off the trappings of fame and goes home. She marries the boy next door! From the candy store! "It has a happy ending!" I laughed to my dad over the phone, in goofy disbelief.

I can still be made a fool of, by a good-looking man with an acoustic guitar. When we were very little, riding around in Dad's truck, he'd sing doo-wop and make me and Sis sing backup. Elvis, Simon and Garfunkel. I remember him telling me about discovering Buddy Holly, that early, gritchy rock-and-roll rhythm seeping out of the radio and into his rural Snohomish childhood, the thrill and the shock of tuning that in. The year he got the Compleat Beatles Songbook for Christmas, all the tablature, we spent two days poring over it and singing ourselves hoarse, while Sis rolled her eyes in the background and probably secretly longed to drown us out with her Madonna albums.

In the last decade, Dad developed a consuming obsession with folk and bluegrass music. He went to festivals, he played at community events and little local bars, jammed with strangers and with a regular group. He sent me a variety of banjo-player jokes he found on the Internet, and made me several mix CDs of the roots music he most loved. Here is a confession: I sang along with some of these in the car, the high harmonies, training myself for that hillbilly wailing. My dumb secret fantasy was that, at some point, I'd join him and his band, somewhere public, sing on stage with my father, surprise and impress him with how I could belt it out. House of Gold. Angel Band. Oh, bear me away on your snow white wings.

The last time he came to stay with me, when I bought my house, he brought his guitar...but he wouldn't play a full song for me, just bits and snatches, fiddling around, faltering. He seemed embarrassed, suddenly, to perform for just me, adult me. He sang me part of one he'd written, trailing off after the chorus, and I couldn't prod him into continuing. Sis says that on his most recent visit with her, he brought the guitar, too, but it made the dog howl.

I was making him a mix CD myself, for Father's Day. I wanted to introduce him to The Knitters, throw in a little Lyle Lovett swing.

He didn't have a will, of course, or any kind of plan at all for this eventuality. Goddamn it, Dad, I have said, more than once, this week. "I know you get the guitar," my stepmother said, apropos of nothing, Wednesday. He'd alluded to this, for years, but of course neither of us actually expected it to happen. When I was very little, actually, a toddler, I wasn't allowed to touch the guitar--though I did, when he wasn't home to see it. I don't remember ever getting caught. I am longing for it now, I am desperate to have it, and I am frankly terrified to go down there and actually have to take it into my own hands.

* * * * *

Dad and my stepmom left Seattle for La Center in 1982, trying to recapture something of his rural childhood, I think, in that then-tiny podunk farm town. From what I know, that childhood was rather shitty, so I don't know what he might have been looking for. At any rate, he tore down and rebuilt their rotting farmhouse one wall at a time, though he was never quite satisfied over the years, always tinkering: nah, I don't like the deck over here, and he'd rip it off and add a skylight, extend the porch instead, move the bathtub to a different wall.

This might be as good an opportunity as any to admit that I find Jason Lee's incarnation on My Name is Earl weirdly compelling and even attractive, in a way that I am really NOT entirely comfortable with. Go figure.

We grew a lot further apart, with the physical distance and my own adolescence. For years he coached girls' softball there; we'd play with some of those kids on our summer visits. He quit abruptly when Sis turned 18, and I asked him why. He said something like, "Oh, I only did it to know what girls your age were thinking and doing, you know? To be tuned in to what you guys thought was cool." I heard this and thought awwww, he was doing it to be closer to us! How sweet! It was a couple of years--YEARS--before I realized, hey--if you wanted to know what we were thinking, you could have picked up THE PHONE, maybe.

I find this next picture devastating and hilarious both: the visible disconnect. We're at a figure skating competition--so I guess, technically, he was attempting to pay attention to what I was interested in. But I am fifteen, and I am trying so hard to be Fancy, and he is so, so...not.

And oh my GOD, people could SEE him, in PUBLIC. I was mortified, then. I am sorry, now. I am angry, still, a little.

* * * * *
We had a very bitter and cathartic fight, once, on a terrible visit that included a trip to Reno, The Saddest Little City In the World. (Oh my God, he loved the slots, loved the blinky lights and pretty girls, loved to stand over my shoulder and say oh, so close, two lemons and a cherry! just think, if only it had been THREE lemons! wouldn't that be amazing! and I could never convince him that THIS IS THE WAY THIS WHOLE TOWN WORKS, IT IS NEVER NEVER THREE FUCKING LEMONS.) He accused me of not respecting him, of not taking his advice, financial and otherwise; I maintained that he'd moved away, neglected us as kids, that he had his wife waiting on him hand and foot, that no one else was entitled to so much as the fucking remote, let alone an opinion.

"When you're an adult, you'll understand some things," he shouted.

"Well, I'm 27 years old, Dad; when do you think that'll be?" I snapped. I left in a fury, drove home at speeds surely not legal in any state, hurled the ridiculous, immense takeout cinnamon roll he'd pressed on me into the dumpster behind my apartment building. I fantasized about his funeral. I knew what song I would play, bitter, snotty, triumphant. Buddy Holly. You say you're gonna leave me, you know that's a lie. Wait. Which one of us was speaking, through that song?

And for a long time, we didn't speak. But when we did, at last, things were different. I don't know how to explain it except that we saw each other clearly, in complete. I was an adult, and he'd finally noticed; I, too, had realized that he was who he was. Often, that person was a 6'2" ten-year-old...but he was entirely himself, always had been. And in figuring that out, we achieved a kind of peace with each other.

* * * * *

He was, truly, an enormous kid. He owned an electronic Fart Machine, which he would tote to bluegrass festivals and deploy around the campfire. He laughed so hard at the pie-eating contest/vomit scene in Stand By Me that he gave himself a nosebleed and we had to stop the tape. He built marvelous Lincoln-Log fortresses on the living room floor, and then would stand across the room lobbing the smaller logs into them like shells, making the long whistle, the explosion noises, destroying his creations while we hollered at him to stop knocking them back down. The Fourth of July was his favorite holiday; he loved nothing more than blowing shit up all over the driveway, and somehow he left this earth with all ten fingers still. When his diabetes could no longer be controlled by diet and he had to start taking insulin, the first time he gave himself an injection in my presence he retreated to the bathroom to do so...but then he ran back out into the den, shirt hiked up to show the needle still buried in his belly, syringe dangling from his flesh, yelling GAAAAHHHH! Going for the gross-out. Here he is, sporting the Dr. Bucks fake snaggleteeth he happily wore to the weekend farmers' and artists' market. I love how hard Sis is laughing, trying not to wet her pants.

* * * * *

When we were really little, he'd do this one thing, all the damn time: he loved hide and seek. We'd be goofing around on some construction site he was working, the skeleton of a new house--safe, Dad! Nice!--or walking idly through enormous, woody Lincoln Park, in West Seattle...and Dad would edge behind us, and then just...step off the trail. Slink into the bushes and see how long it would take for us to notice. Suddenly, he'd just be...gone. There Sis and I would be, two dummies, Hansel and Gretel, clutching at each other and looking around, increasingly nervous, jumping at every twig snap and bird tweet. He'd lob tiny pebbles at us from his hiding place, bink! on the shoulder or head. Or, eventually, he'd get to laughing, and that would finally give him away.

Birds all sing as if they knew

Last night, I approached the season finale of The Office with the same giddy anticipation as the rest of you: OMG was Jim gonna propose to Pam?!? I mean, I'd started screaming a tiny bit in my living room when he showed off the ring, like, a month ago. Wheeee! I watched breathless to see it unfold; I winced when poor Andy, heaven help him, stepped all over the moment and popped the question to frosty, mortified Angela instead; I shuddered and giggled in equal measure when she said "...Okay." (And I gasped and cringed and giggled some more at the final twist, Angela breaking her marriage vows before she'd even taken them. Poor, poooooor deluded Andy! But also thank God, and also BOY are things going to be tense on the Party Planning Committee going forward.)

But then, this morning, I was watching a few moments of the Today show before darting off to the gym. And on the steps of the California State Supreme Court, people gasped and cheered and screamed for joy, and a small salt-and-pepper-haired woman shouted into her cell phone: "Honey, will you marry me?" And that, that was the proposal that made me burst into tears, this week. "She's crying," the woman said, grinning, holding the phone out at the camera. Me too, lady, me too. Congratulations, to California and to everyone now allowed to marry whoever they damn well please, whoever they love. Two states down, 48 to go.

Also if there are any Jim Halpert-esque boys out there who would like to propose to me, please yell a little louder; I haven't spotted you yet.

Tubby

Twice a week, after yoga class, I try to indulge myself--and temper my anxiety a bit more--by spending at least a few minutes relaxing in the hot tub at Fancy Gym. I do find myself constantly wanting to refer to it like Will Ferrell's creepy professor character from SNL: hotTUB, with the accent on the second syllable. Remember? He'd be in the hotTUB, propositioning everyone to be his lovah and then, like, eating an entire roast chicken like it was the thirteenth century. (I also often refer to my book club in this manner, in my head. BookCLUB.)

The palatial women's locker room at Fancy Gym has three gigantic tiled spas side by side in a restful lounge area, complete with a gently murmuring fountain that trickles over some vaguely classical-looking-type stone pillars. It's a little Vega$ in there. Because the locker room is ladies only, the hotTUBs are clothing-optional, and we're all pretty much politely discreet with our gazes. That said, the first time I got into the whirlpool sans culotte I was damn surprised: I'm a curvy girl, and it turns out that, unfettered by a spandex suit, I am...very buoyant. Some parts of me in particular are really REALLY buoyant, and bobbled away so furiously right beneath the surface that I sort of wished I had a buddy, to point this out to. It was seriously a little amazing, this demonstration of physics that I hadn't previously been witness to. Too much information? Probably. Well, what is this Internet for, I ask you.

Anyway. Tonight, I confess, I may have rudely--if surreptitiously--stared at the woman across from me, in spite of myself. I was distracted, first, by what she was wearing: a very nice watch, on one wrist. Luckily, she was very successfully keeping that hand up out of the roiling waters...probably because that was the same hand she was using to hold her Blackberry. She had it propped up on a little towel on the lip of the spa, and sat turned awkwardly sideways on the bench seat, scrolling through what seemed to be a lengthy text document.

My first thought was only that I would not court disaster, would not openly taunt fate in such a manner. I am convinced that, were I to attempt so unwise a maneuver, not only would I fumble the little bugger right in the drink with an ironic plunk! of tragedy, but then would probably sustain a head injury diving frantically after it, and drown right there in the Fancy Gym hot tub, naked and humiliated and still bereft of my ruined electronics. (Though, considering my earlier discovery, I would probably rise quite quickly back to the surface and maybe be rescued.)

But the more I thought about this woman, the sadder I felt. Was she...working, in there? Because it's a hot tub. This is the closest thing you can get, really, to a ten-minute, Thursday-night vacation; you are not supposed to do anything but sit there limply, getting the thoughts gently boiled right out of your head. I suppose I should be grateful that she did not have a Bluetooth headset on, was not sitting there trading stocks in so vulnerable a state. But really, it couldn't have waited? I hope for her sake it was a long goofy e-mail from a friend, or a fun blog post (ha), or some erotic West Wing fan fiction--anything mindless and fluffy and not, like, a market-saturation analysis of FY08 Q4, or what have you.

She was still in there, steaming and scrolling, when I climbed out and made my drippy footprint-trail away to the dressing area, feeling rather sorry for us both somehow.

Street cred

At first I thought I was having a neurological event. Did anyone else hear that?--the disorganized crash-and-thump coming, it seemed, from down the block? Then the racket coalesced into a discernible pattern, the pounding tempo of a full-on drum corps. This was not immediately much more comforting, I admit--for another moment, I wondered just what the hell had moved into Crazy Trashy Rental House now. The cats scattered under the furniture, huge-pupiled, and at last the horn section kicked in: a brassy but entirely recognizable marching-band arrangement of--yes, again--Thriller.

Okay, then...? On the sidewalk the noise was louder, echoing and bouncing oddly between houses as I walked up one block and then another. All around me were neighbors doing the same thing, with dogs and strollers and puzzled expressions, converging on the source...which turned out to be the Ballard High School marching band, stomping in place on 11th Avenue, in tight formation between the rows of parked cars on either curb. They swept into "You Can Call Me Al" as I approached, a clutch of cheerleaders in casual wear marching behind and gesturing briskly with red and silver pom-poms.

I asked someone, a lady leaning off her front steps, looking like a proud mom. Turns out the Beaver Band has some sort of upcoming event in Victoria, B.C.; they've been marching back and forth on the playing field, but apparently needed a little practice on a genuine street. Impromptu parade! Little kids ran down the block barefoot, looking goofily awed in the presence of marching, musical teens. The sun dropped slowly, shadows lengthening; the band finished its number to a small but vigorous clatter of applause, then set off in close-stepping quarter-time, creeping around the corner, heading west. A little Smokey Robinson, then, "Get Ready," everybody's yard dusky and green and bursting out into spring, and oh, yes, I am very ready for that it turns out.

People will see me and cry

Guilty-pleasure confession: I sat up much too late last night, past midnight, because...I was watching Ice Castles on ABC Family. Yyyeeeaaaah. Oh, dear Lord, how I loved that movie when I was 10 or 12 or so. I was frankly shocked at how much of it I remembered, vividly, music cues and line-for-line dialogue. Either I begged to rent it (on Betamax, naturally) 25 times or it was in heavy rotation on HBO during one of the infrequent periods in which we splurged on premium cable. It is a colossal cheese fest, and even though it is hilariously...unlikely, shall we say, I totally relished seeing it again. Nearly 30 years on (pause here for OHMYGOD inhalation), I was particularly enamored of the fashions, honestly: the little retro-70s ski togs, sporty striped sweaters and matching track pants with ankle zippers, so you could get them on and off over your boots. Wool...or, probably, some creepy polyester knit. I still wanted them...if not, so much, the extraordinary array of feathered-wedge haircuts on display.

Oh, man. The part where our heroine, Lexie, hits The Big Time? Before she is tragically blinded, I mean--where she goes to train at the Broadmoor World Arena and, like, lives in some kind of dorm of teen girl skaters? Like figure-skating boarding school? Ohhhh how I wanted that so badly when I was, what, 12? 14? Old enough to know better, honestly, but I longed for it. It would be like The Facts of Life--ON ICE!

Cintra Wilson, in her novel Colors Insulting to Nature, provides a sidesplitting dissection and analysis of this crappy dumbass movie, skewering all its Hollywood tropes and at the same time pointing out its perfect, desired effect on the book's protagonist, Liza. It's magnificent and I wish I had written it--hell, I might have except Wilson got there first. I could quote the whole thing but I'll just give you the money shot:

Liza, age ten, was devastated by the film's beauty and power.
She wanted more than anything to go blind and have Robby Benson restore
her, through Tough Love, to athletic championship, in both skating and
gymnastics.

This same character, after Fame, also harbors a dream of attending the High School of Performing Arts in New York City. Which...uh, Cintra, give me back my Judy Blume diary, thanks much.

I was having dinner with a group of friends, some years ago now, when someone raised the question of "what did you want to be when you grew up?" I'd harbored vague ideas as a child about being a librarian--because I thought they got to live in the library--or a teacher, because I adored all of mine. And, probably always, some part of me wanted to be a writer. But I surprised myself and my dinner companions a little by answering thusly: "Famous." I wanted the abstract concept, more than any specific career; I didn't really care about the "for what?" part. Any opportunity to dance/sing/behave in a generally melodramatic fashion...oh, man, was I all over that. (Note that, in finally taking up figure skating, I deliberately selected a glamour sport; I owe quite a lot of that to ol' Robby Benson.)

In the privacy of my room, I sang into hairbrushes and talcum-powder canisters, or the pulley apparatus for my bedroom curtains. This was attached to the wall by a hinge, so that you could pull it out away from the wall or snap it back, obviously like a microphone in a stand. I practiced and practiced my award-acceptance speech(es), adding and cutting out my parents or whoever had mortally insulted me in fifth-period French that week. ("I'd like to NOT dedicate this Oscar to Joanna. She knows why.") And the fantasy of somehow, someday Being Discovered informed my every waking daydream, without question. I would be the diligent understudy, yanked from the wings when the lead got strep or the defending champion sprained her ankle. Or there would be a Hollywood talent agent at the next table at Perkins Cake & Steak--where Grandpa took us nearly every Friday night until he died--and he would look at me and just know. My moment was coming, I was absolutely certain of it. Any day now!

Any day now. Robby, call me!

Hell is for children

Pulling out of the Starbucks lot ahead of me is a sleek, black luxury automobile with a vanity plate: SATAN. Which...wow, really? That was what you picked? And they let you? Well, that's...interesting. I suspect that the actual Prince of Darkness would not feel so insecure that he would need to brag about it quite that much, but whatever. Also I am late, Dark Lord, so apply some pressure to the pedal on the right if you would.

At the next stoplight I pulled alongside to openly gawk at Old Scratch. I was hoping desperately that it would be Ray Wise behind the wheel, but it was a woman. Dark hair, kinda severe, only murkily visible behind the heavily tinted glass. She glanced back, with an irritated "what are you looking at?" expression. Um, lady, your licence plate implies you are THE DEVIL. Forgive me if I stare rudely. You can take it, I think. And should be used to it.

Then I noticed what she had in the back seat: a festive balloon bouquet. Jolly pastels, at least one mylar balloon with a smiley face. Happy Birthday? Get Well Soon? I couldn't make it out before the light changed and Beelzebub pulled slowly, regally away.

No mere mortal can resist

The weather in Seattle has been doing this false-spring thing that happens almost every February: for a week, maybe two, the days are suddenly glorious, sunny, with temperatures nearing 60 degrees. The branch tips of all the ornamental cherry trees on my block are misted in pink; random crocuses erupt from the lawn at Bagley Elementary. And everybody responds in pretty much the same time-honored way: by running around outside like ninnies, wearing as little clothing as possible. This ensures that everyone gets a good head cold going just in time for it to start raining again, which it will do until June.

But it isn't raining yet. This week I reaped another one of spring's rewards, when I pulled on a lightweight jacket I hadn't worn in nearly six months, put my hand in the pocket, and discovered both a cheap stretchy headband I'd been missing, and my favorite sunglasses, which I'd long assumed had been left in god only knows what coffee shop. Hurray! I hoped that maybe there'd be a forgotten $20 bill in the other pocket, but my luck did not extend quite that far. Oh well.

To take advantage of today's sun (and, no doubt, to bring the rain around forthwith), I went up to the coin-op car wash near my house, to give the Cherry Bomb a good scrubbing. The place was packed, nearly every stall full. The car wash backs onto a residential alley, and so there are multiple signs posted over the wax guns and vaccum hoses: No Loud Music. But that hadn't deterred the guy parked dead center at the vacuum island, all four doors open, blasting his album of choice: Thriller.

Oh, Thriller. The good old days, man, before Michael Jackson lost his entire mind. Just a couple weeks ago, Krispy pointed out to me that it's been 25 years since that album came out, a number that seems impossible. Likewise, I can't conceive of a pop-cultural moment that could so entirely capture the entire freaking planet today. At the height of Thriller's prominence, Mom, Sis, and I each had a copy--a cassette for the car, vinyl to be played indoors on the Good Stereo in the living room. My dad favored Eddie Van Halen's guitar licks on Beat It, and he labored in vain, for what seemed like years, to master the moonwalk. "Is this it? I'm doing it! Am I doing it?" he'd ask, shuffling backwards across the kitchen in his yellow work boots. (And...no, Dad. Sorry. That wasn't it. No, not that time either.) I remember when the Thriller video--puffing itself up a bit as a Short Film--premiered on MTV, a watershed event in itself, because Jackson was one of the first, if not the first, black artist to appear on the network. Yeah, go back and look at that sentence again; I typed it, I lived it, and it's unfathomably remote to me: MTV's Jim Crow period, coinciding with my lifetime. Anyway...MTV aired it every hour on the hour, for the first day or weekend or whatever...and I was incensed because we had to go visit my great aunt, and she didn't have anything as highfalutin' as cable. I missed three or four airings! My seventh-grade cool cred was suffering blow after blow!

So. Thriller at the car wash. Vincent Price rapped, and I couldn't see the other patrons in their respective car-wash cubbies, but...I can't have been the only one, I can't, to have been doing a little zombie shuffle-stomp, my sneakers slapping in the collected puddles of rinse-water and lime-green tire dressing as I wielded the foam brush.

We were up to Billie Jean, by the time I pulled alongside the guy by the vacuum station and set to work buffing with an old beach towel. Sadly, the buckled pavement did not light up underneath my feet, or his. Dude was taking his time, babying his car with about half a dozen bottles of different automotive unguents and potions at his feet. He was kind of a ridiculous specimen, on sight: tiger-striped (!) doo rag, mobile-phone ear bud hooked over his right ear. Not old enough, I don't think, to remember this album from the first time around. "Is my music too loud?" he asked me politely, and only now am I wondering if he asked me this because he thought I was old. Too old for loud, too old to jam.

"No--I love it!" I blurted helplessly. Quite the contrary, my ironic friend. It was taking everything I had not to outright shake my ass to the good old non-insane King of Pop, younger then than I am now. Yikes, man. It's all turned out quite a lot scarier than Quincy Jones ever anticipated, I expect. But oh, the memories. That album, raising the dead for the express purpose of getting down.

All roads lead here

So Erin very kindly suggested that I ought to write a memoir, which makes me laugh a bit. I don’t know that I can sustain being interesting beyond more than the intermittent blog entry. But I’ll admit that I’ve actually had the title for my nonexistent autobiography for close to 20 years. And in explaining it, I get to tell a story and take full advantage of all kinds of Internet linkery in the process. I am so multimedia!

Okay. The Dog House Restaurant, a long-lost old-Seattle institution, opened in 1934 and operated 24/7 for more than half a century. Legend has it they might have closed for a night when Kennedy was assassinated, but beyond that they were serving up diner fare and camaraderie and poor attitudes every hour of every day for 60 years, during which period three generations of my family alone appreciated its many merits. The Dog House was seedy in all the most magnificent ways. People could still smoke in Seattle restaurants, during the Dog House heyday, and did they ever: the air in there was tangible, fog-dense with grease and nicotine. It could have been a lovely afternoon in May, no matter: in the Dog House it was always dark as two a.m. I have a vivid memory of standing up in a booth there as a very small child, and discovering that what I had thought were simply large brown squares placed at intervals on the wall were actually pictures. Photographs of scenic Washington vistas, Mt. Rainier and Lake Chelan, already all but obscured under several decades of tar.

Raymond Chandler would feel entirely comfortable in the Dog House, as would Richard Russo, and possibly the entire cast of characters from Mad Men, slumming. I would bet dollars to donuts that Kurt and Courtney whiled away more than a handful of hours in there over a plate of fries. There’d be drunks in one booth, a family with little kids in the next, ironic hipsters perched beside weary salesmen on stools at the counter. I had several awkward dates there, and several post-dates, trying to recover some dignity over gritty coffee. For years, my family went to the Dog House for Christmas Day dinner because, hell, it was open. On holidays, the elderly hostess would wear an eye-popping red sequined gown.

At least half of the waitresses had been there since its inception: irritable septuagenarians with towering white beehive hairdos and, after a lifetime slinging hash, zero tolerance for dithering. You’d damn well better know what you wanted when they asked for your order, or you were unlikely to get asked again any time soon. There was an attached cocktail lounge, too—you could thus order a cheeseburger and a chocolate ice-cream float, or pancakes and a Singapore Sling. The lounge, which I somehow never managed to legally enter, also contained a piano bar. I can remember sitting with my family at dinner and hearing occasional bizarre gusts of inebriated caterwauling blasting from the bar, in the days before karaoke. The noise was awesome, in all senses of the word. I could not wait to grow up and get in there to see the source of that racket, to make some of my own. I still can’t believe that I never did.

Up front, next to the cash register, they had a glass case full of other items you might want to buy while settling your bill: Hershey bars, packs of JuicyFruit, lottery tickets, cigars. The vice of your choice. A classic diner thing, that glass case of sundries just inside the door. I can’t remember the last time I saw one anywhere.

Above the pass-through to the kitchen was a large 3-D mural, replicated on the menus, the Dog House’s raison d’etre: a map, of all the other vices and foibles that would inevitably point you diner-ward. “All Roads Lead to the Dog House,” it proclaimed, and then the various paths were labeled with the sort of circumstances that might get you there. Most prominent among these: Blondes, Brunettes, Redheads. Though other vectors were also mentioned: Night Clubs, Taverns, Lodges, Private Secretaries, Boozers, Marines. Nagging. Usherettes.

When they announced the Dog House was finally closing, Seattle openly grieved. People made off with the fixtures and pocketed the menus, and yeah…Sis and I each have one (I’m pulling those road-to-the-Dog-House labels off of it right now). On one visit, we got to reminiscing with one of the veteran waitresses. In the early 1940s, my grandmother had been a carhop at the Igloo Drive-In, a rival restaurant a few blocks from the Dog House (it hadn’t held out nearly as long). Grammy’s boss would send her over to the Dog House in her street clothes, on spy missions: she was to sit at the counter with a cup of coffee and commit their menu prices to memory, see if the Igloo could undercut them a little. “Oh my God,” said the Dog House waitress when Grammy mentioned this, laughing and laughing. Turns out her boss had been sending her to scope out the Igloo, 50 years before. The Dog House’s final hour of operation was broadcast live on the local PBS station, and my hand to God, I sat in front of the television and cried. I heard, after, that they’d had to go out and buy a CLOSED sign, expressly for the purpose of flipping it over in the front window.

It wasn’t long before a new (and, I’m sure, inferior) 24-hour restaurant opened in the same location—coincidentally mentioned on Seattlest just today. Apparently the lot is getting too valuable, and the replacement ironic-hipster dive will now suffer the same fate, though it probably won’t be so missed. I can’t say—I’ve never been. At any rate, the Hurricane Café hasn’t established multiple generations of clientele like its predecessor. I can’t explain exactly what it was that so captivated me about the Dog House, always, even when I was a little girl. It was like walking into a novel, every time: the regulars cheek-by-jowl with truckers and lawyers and street kids, the million stories in the naked city, circulating in the perpetual night-owl nighttime of the Dog House, over whiskey and coffee, Monte Cristos and liverwurst sandwiches. I’m looking over my stained and dog-eared (heh) menu now, and it’s a beautiful thing. You could get a Diet Plate, or a Shrimp Louie. You could get a veal cutlet or a glass of “Double Jersey Buttermilk.” In small print on the bottom of the right-hand page, it says: SINGLES IN BOOTHS MUST SHARE TABLE WITH OTHERS…and I cannot even tell you how much I want to travel through time, right now, to sit in a single booth at the Dog House, order a cheeseburger—the bun glistening with the line cook’s oily fingerprint—and see who the hell shows up to sit opposite.

Oh, right: the point of this. The title of my memoir. It’s another quote from the Dog House menu, actually, the tiniest possible text, probably six-point type, the legendary 60-year caveat printed beneath their $5.75 Rib Eye Steak (served with Tossed Salad, French Fried Potatoes, and Toast). Ready?

Tenderness Not Guaranteed.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Meta

How long had it been, since I'd seen you? From back before you were sober, so three years at least. There'd been the occasional e-mails, the rarer phone calls, but we'd kept a pixelated distance between us. I'll confess: I was mostly expecting you to be bald. I was surprised to be wrong.

We'd both worked with David Waggoner in the MFA program at UW, so when I heard he was reading as part of the lecture series at Hugo House, I asked if you'd be going too. I don't remember which one of us suggested coffee, before.

It was good to see you. It always is, in the moments of familiarity and affection we can't help. You look so much more like your father, who I always liked and missed. You pointed it out before I did. "Could be worse: you could be like me, and look more every day like MY dad," I suggested, and we laughed, hard, and laughing it is easy to remember: yes, this is my friend. I've missed my friend. I miss him.

It was hard to see you. Hard to hear about your struggles, different from mine but who can say whose are more miserable? It's not a contest. Hard to look back at who we'd been, hard to recognize who we are now. Hard to hear you are tentatively dating again, however much I don't want or need to invite more drama, or your drama, into my life. Hard to not know what it is I want anyway.

The Hugo House lectures each have a theme. This one made sense, sure, falling the day after Valentine's Day: "Love is the Drug." I'd given that a passing thought: we were going to sit together in the dark while writers read about love? I'm sure there are more fucked-up ways to spend a Friday evening, although in the moment I was hard-pressed to come up with any of them. The theme was love, and what we got was tales of failed and ruined love, relationships gone sour, longing after youth, after the lost, breakups and dissolutions and people left so lonely that they're experiencing the physical manifestation of the word, buying it at the store like a commodity. Two solid hours of devastated, broken-ass hearts. Okay, then. Are there any happy love stories, love poems? Nobody brought any, Friday night, anyway.

And so I sat there in the dark, beside you. Beside my reunited friend and my bitter bitter ex and the man I thought I'd marry and the man who broke my heart, and it was lovely (seewhatIdidthere?) and at the same time I waited and hoped to die, a little bit. Maybe a bolt of lightning, before the lights came back up? Coup de foudre, the French say, falling in love the equivalent of a lightning strike. Maybe Cupid, with a hollow-point bullet. It was all the meta I could buy for $20. I thought, after, that if Hugo House had commissioned a piece on love from me, for this series, I couldn't have made up anything truer than what I felt sitting there in the dark, laughing my ass off and stifling tears. I was telling this story later, and a friend wondered idly with me, how many other dramas were unfolding through that audience, that night, that we couldn't know about? How many hearts were healing and breaking? How many divorces, how many first dates? How many of us shaking our heads, saying yes, exactly, yes. Oh, no.

It was good to love you. It was hard to love you.

Do I need a Twitter account?

Because I wanted to share, and yet am not sure this fact merits an entire blog post: at 2:15 PM, mid-conference with my boss, I realize I am wearing two different earrings.

Rhymes with "raucous"

Mike has a nice post about attending his local Democratic caucus on Saturday, and the broad general details of his experience don't differ much from mine. I too was a first-time caucus...er, strolling the four blocks to Whittier Elementary (go Wildcats!) to cram myself in with the rest of my progressive-minded neighbors.

Democracy, it turns out, consists of a lot of standing around, temperature and volume rising, while you wait to actually Decide Things. Nonetheless it was strangely thrilling, for me, to be witness to all that newfound political enthusiasm cramming into the cafeteria/auditorium, 700+ strong. Babies in strollers and on shoulders. A guy on crutches, a woman in a motorized wheelchair. A clump of daycare classmates at my table set to coloring with vigor. People gave up their seats on the long narrow cafeteria benches for white-haired old ladies. My precinct officer, and the subsequent speakers, climbed up on the tables, straining to make themselves heard, and people helped them clamber up and down, clapping politely for each.

A little kid in front of me in the sign-in line clutched a copy of Duck for President. Learning Opportunity! "Dad, vote for Duck! Don't forget," the kid remarked urgently. "Okay, I'll write him in," his dad murmured absently. They weren't in my precinct, so I am not sure whether Duck has a lone delegate heading off to the county caucus. I do feel a certain obligation to point out that, whatever his platform, Duck appears to be yet another white male.

More exciting than the vote, in the initial milling-around phase, was getting to gossip with the other folks from my street about Those Neighbors: rental tenants whose long-time-coming, two-month eviction process finally wrapped up in the wee hours of January 2nd. They had two people living in the garage! someone noted. They were burning chopped-up furniture in their enormous barbecue smoker! a second person said. They'd stagger out to vomit in the alley! announced the guy from the north end of the block. Wow. I didn't even get to tell the story of how one of the cavalcade of stars resident in That House had crashed into my car and driven blithely away. Oh, Trashy Neighbors, now inflicting fresh miseries on someone else's block. They were entertaining, in a way, with their half-dozen shitty vehicles and their monstrous above-ground vinyl pool and their band practice...but I gather that they are not in fact missed.

Where was I? Right, right: democracy. I'm proud to admit I'm part of the Obama tidal wave that swept all four states in contention this weekend, though I'd willingly, gladly vote for either eventual nominee. I am frankly stunned, and thrilled, and humbled, to have such a choice to make. Even last year, a history teacher at the high school Mom worked at told his students point-blank, you will never see a black man or a woman as a Presidential nominee. Not in your lifetime, he informed those kids, a full generation behind me. Not in my lifetime and not in theirs. Well, well. You'd better start swimmin', or you'll sink like a stone, there, Teach.

Mom and Sis both caucused in their respective precincts as well, first-timers all. I wanted to point that out, actually, as a marker of Sis's political evolution. When she turned 18, she felt so disenfranchised, she didn't bother to even register. I think it was at least a decade before she went so far as to secure a ballot at all. This weekend, Sis volunteered as an Obama delegate for the county caucus at the next level. That? Makes me glow, a little bit, way inside.

A privilege, to feel a part of this, of something amazing and unprecedented and so, so hopeful, happening.

The vision thing

Actually, two vision things today, vaguely. First: you know what's kind of awesome? Being in a meeting where someone's Seeing Eye dog is snoring really loudly, under the table. Awesome, and hilarious.

Second: last week I made a visit to the eye doctor. It had been about three years since my last appointment; my prescription hasn't changed that much, but my contact lenses are just worn and scratched enough that they're starting to collect little calcium deposits (so says the doc) that no amount of by-hand scrubbing will remove. The little bleary, smeary speckles drifting across my field of vision were driving me nuts; plus, I'd like to be able to switch things up occasionally with an up-to-date pair of glasses. Hence the visit.

My current optometrist runs a little mom-and-pop office in my neighborhood, literally: he and his wife run the place, and last time I was there they had their baby son rolling around on a play mat in the lobby. (He's now three, and across the street at daycare, heh.) It's always a friendly, chatty visit, resoundingly different from the incredibly intimidating old bastard who examined my eyes and exuded general disapproving menace when I was a kid.

The doctor I saw as a child was located downtown, in the Cobb Building, a beautiful old brick pile now converted to luxury condos. At the time, I found even the building itself frightening, for two reasons: one, its ornamental trim featured enormous terra-cotta busts of an Indian chief in full feather headdress, and I was perpetually afraid that one of these would come loose and crush me on the street below. Beyond that, they just looked angry. Two, across the street was the even more terrifying Rainier Tower, an office building that tapers down into a slender pedestal, like a pencil point. I didn't know shit about structural engineering, at eight--still don't--and (as the photographer for the link above notes) at the time I found it hella creepy. If the Indian heads didn't get you, the teetering tower surely would.

Add to that the fact that going to the optometrist was just...scary. I can't remember the guy's name, but he was old and brusque and had little patience for children. "Which is better, one or two? Oneortwo?" he'd bark, flipping sample lenses back and forth in the huge black phoropter (thanks for that $10 word, Wikipedia!) clamped to your face like a cast-iron torture device. Omigod, what if you got it wrong? What would he do to you then? I lived in dread of finding out; the way he'd irritably peel back my cringing eyelids for the stinging dilation drops was awful enough. I think Dr. Mean Bastard triple-booked his appointments, too, just to feed his own self-importance; I can remember waiting and waiting with my mother in the grim green lobby.

Most of the equipment in my current optometrist's office is sleek and modern and computerized; the phoropter is smooth, molded beige plastic. The doctor and I got to chatting about my medieval reminiscences, and I mentioned how huge and deadly the device had been in the 70s. "Well, probably it seemed a lot bigger when your head was like this," he suggested, holding up his hands to suggest the span of a honeydew melon.

He had to dilate my eyes this time, so while we waited for my pupils to start looking like Jim Morrison's, I strolled around the lobby glancing at swanky designer frames. "Want to try some out?" asked Dr. Mrs. Eye Doctor from behind her desk. I hedged. "I'm cheap; I just want to take the prescription to, like, LensCrafters," I said.

"Oh, try 'em on," she scoffed, and came out to hand me approximately 30 more varieties of frame than I would have selected myself. (In this way, it was not unlike a professional bra fitting.)

"Nothing too square," I said, squinting crazy-pupilled at myself in the mirror. "My face is already little bit square..." She handed me a particularly angular pair and stepped back.

"Oh, I see what you mean. About your jaw," she said pointedly. Yes, my head is actually a perfect cube, lady. Let's try to de-emphasize my Rockem-Sockem Robots qualities, shall we? Naturally, we did end up finding at least half a dozen that were perfectly acceptable, and for only a few hundreds of dollars. She wrote all the models down for me, so we wouldn't forget. Sigh. I will have to drag Sis along for a second opinion, I think.

At last I looked sufficiently swacked out of my mind, and the doctor took me back into the exam room and set me up in front of another examination device, this one connected to a digital camera and a huge LCD monitor. I twitted the doctor a bit about his operating system of choice--no comment--while he snapped a series of photographs of the insides of my eyeballs and projected them on the monitor, the size of basketballs. He pointed out my optic nerves, a tiny bit of retinal scarring, while I stared fascinated and a tiny bit squeamish all at once. Blown up to that size, lit orange-ish from within and traced with red veins, my eyes resembled Mars, as much as anything. Strange scanned planets, or...breasts, honestly.

My new lenses would arrive in about 10 days, they told me. Unprompted--but perhaps inspired by my general interest in the whole computer end of things?--the doctor printed off a souvenir glossy photo for me. Of my eyeballs. Postcard size, left and right...at this dimension, more like blood oranges, or bizarre cocktail olives, but still faintly obscene. If you didn't know what you were looking at, at first, you'd think, inappropriate! Actually, you might still. Windows of the soul and all that. Little red planets. "Here you go," the doctor said, handing me the print. "Um...thanks," I said dumbly, slipping it into my purse.

I have it pinned to the corkboard above my desk at work, now. You question the legitimacy of my leaving early for an appointment, you say? Take that, suckers!

Give it up for your mascot

Apologies in advance for the marathon length of this post. Apologies also to Seattlest's Seth, should he turn up; I'm scared that the last paragraph might break his heart.

‘Tis the season, so last night I met up with Mike and Roger for our annual appreciation of nutritionally unsound food, followed by local high-school basketball. Because my alma mater, Garfield, is undergoing renovations, Garfield is currently housed well north of its roots, in the former Lincoln High School building in the more…affluent-white-liberal Wallingford neighborhood.

A word about Lincoln, first: that’s where my mom went, class of 1965. She was part of a truly gigantic baby-boom onslaught; there were over a thousand kids in her class alone. When I was growing up, she vividly remembered and described her high-school experience, and her yearbooks were kept in a basket of various oversized volumes in our living room. I used to pull these out and pore over them as a kid, flat on the floor, breathing in their musty black-and-white smell and trying to decipher the different looped or craggy handwriting. I studied them as if they were guidebooks; in hindsight, I probably knew those yearbooks better than the ones I accrued myself, years later. I remember the photos the way you do the illustrations in a beloved children’s book: the knee socks and plaid pencil skirts; the homecoming king and queen (who were forced to dress up as Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln, hilariously). The attempts at witty captions. Drivers’ ed mishaps and German exchange students. Boys in drag at a pep assembly, because boys in dresses will never not be funny.

After 30 years and tons of therapy, I’ve begun to recognize that my mom is one of those people for whom the high school years really were a golden era, “the best days of your life.” I mean, God forbid, right?...but in her stories, in the way she kept those yearbooks close at hand for decades, I have kind of sussed out that she was really happy, then. Maybe her happiest. At this juncture, that’s a distressing thought, however little I can do about it. I do remember being both relieved and disappointed, in equal measure, to arrive at Garfield in 1984 and discover that it had nothing at all to do with the the world represented in those Lincoln Totems.

So. Garfield vs. Woodinville, a suburban school, at Garfield’s temporary “home.” As it upgrades its sometimes nearly century-old high school buildings, Seattle’s been cycling multiple schools through the Lincoln facility for multi-year stints. Lincoln itself closed in 1982 and was allowed to languish for at least a decade before getting its own marginal improvements to serve as a staging area. Thus, the gym is assertively neutral; there are no logos on the floor, and Garfield’s various league and state title banners must be safely in storage. The grimy acoustic panels behind the baskets are painted an institutional blue, officially no one’s color. The temporary pads on the walls are purple, and the big bulldog-head sign I remember is bolted to the wall in an awkward corner, but that’s about it.

The bleachers, surprisingly, are new: molded plastic-and-metal affairs that are solid, so that you can’t drop your change or your jacket down there, or make out underneath, or hang around attempting to look up someone’s skirt. Roger noted with approval the pre-molded ass curve that ran the length of each seating panel, and I have to concur: the classic wooden bleachers were aesthetically charming but meant crippling disfigurement to the over-30 set. We made it through the last quarter of the girls’ showdown and the whole boys’ game last night, and I didn’t need a cervical collar to get up, so that’s good.

We were expecting a Garfield blowout, and surprised not to get it: the first three quarters were a tense scramble, Garfield particularly struggling to penetrate the snarl of Woodinville defenders anywhere near the hoop. Despite the close game, however, I found myself constantly distracted by the people-watching. The pep band did a hip-swaying dance in place that set the entire stands rocking gently beneath us. I singled out the girl in the band with whom I identified, with her avant-garde glasses, retro wedge haircut, and vintage plaid coat. (I wasn't her, in the 80s, but I sure wanted to be.) Her battered cardboard instrument case was dotted with stickers; during the action, she and a friend leaned their heads together over the complicated liner notes of a CD, giggling. At the half, she and several girls ran out to the concession stand and returned with pink boxes of those chalky conversation hearts, Valentine’s Day a mere month away.

At one point, the game was halted when a Woodinville player lost a contact lens in a scuffle under the basket. This moment surprised me most: several coaches and trainers, down on their knees at the end of the court, gingerly patting back and forth, one wielding a flashlight. After several minutes, one of the refs bent deeply at the waist, reaching to make the universal one-fingered *poink* of contact-lens retrieval and proudly offering her prize to the relieved kid. Spit on that and slap it back in, son, there’s a game to play! That they found the damn thing, though--intact, after all that sneakered stomping! That was frankly the most amazing thing I witnessed all night.

Garfield also has a number-one fan that I’ve seen at our previous games, a guy from the neighborhood whose name, I think, is Rick. I don’t remember Rick from my days, although it’s entirely possible he was there; Mike tells me, via his kids, that Rick has been hanging about at every game for years. Rick has haphazard teeth, and may be slightly inebriated, or delayed, or some combination of both…but Rick’s primary characteristic is that he loves Garfield basketball like nothing else on earth. He paces the sidelines; he knows all the cheers. He stands a few feet behind and adjacent to the pep-band conductor and conducts along with him, or compels the crowd to join in. Periodically, the band plays a romping traditional fight-song anthem, to which I believe there were lyrics, in the 60s—I looked them up, for some dumb yearbook assignment myself. During this number I watched Rick closely, to see if he was singing the words…but his lips showed only “ba baaa ba ba ba ba-baaa” in time with the tune. I don’t know if Rick is an alum, or just a devotee. I was happy, though, that someone had thought to bring him along to Lincoln, transplanting him to this alien neighborhood of hemp yoga wear and Thai bistros and multiple dog-sweater boutiques.

At the half, two of the Garfield cheerleaders sauntered—GHS cheerleaders all have master certification in sauntering—over to the announcer’s table and commandeered the microphone. “Okay,” announced one. “Um. Okay, um. This is— " swiveling to give a snickering glare at her classmates—“shhh! This is—shut up. Um, okay, this, uh…this is. Um. This is for Rick.” She held up a crisp new GHS t-shirt, which Rick trotted across the gym to collect, beaming. He folded it carefully under his arm before resuming his pep-conducting duties in front of our bleachers. “Was that a ceremony?” Roger leaned over to ask me, under his breath. Yes. Good enough, I think.

The announcer clearly dreamed of a career in sports radio. “High school basketball,” he reminded us periodically. “You wait ten minutes and the second half starts! The most Friday-night entertainment you can buy for six dollars, ladies and gentlemen.”

Fourth quarter—still a tight game, but Garfield was able to put a handful of points between themselves and the Falcons as the end drew nigh. One of the real reasons we’d gone to the game was to get a look at Tony Wroten, Jr., the 14-year-old freshman phenom that local media has basically been anointing as the Second Coming. The Seattlest crew essentially believes this kid can fly, so we were frustrated that Woodinville seemed to keep a tight lid on Wroten for most of the night. That reputation is a lot of pressure for someone that’s just barely been introduced to Algebra, which makes me uneasy…but nonetheless we’d all kept our eyes on him throughout. He’s 6’1”, so not huge (though he has time yet to grow). Ultimately what I noticed most is that the kid seems to have the wingspan of a hang glider. Every so often he’d reach to snag an errant pass or loose ball, and his endless arm seemed to unfurl in slow motion, fingertips juuust grazing the ball, tenderly collecting it back into his possession. It was a beauty to behold, man…but really we wanted to see some acrobatics, everyone did.

There were maybe 10 seconds on the clock in the final quarter when Wroten broke free of the pack and took off, sprinting the length of the court. You could feel it coming—I shouted “OH!” aloud, and Wroten sailed up for a monster dunk, the thing we’d been waiting for all night. He hung on the rim for a moment, then dropped—and I didn’t see exactly how he landed, but…he landed wrong. He went down, falling full-length to the hardwood, and writhed. Everybody threw their shouts into reverse, a sharp singular inhale. Silence clapped down over the gym like a bell jar. The clock froze at six seconds while a preternaturally gifted ninth-grader crabbed on the floor, pedaling air. I don’t know which one of us muttered “Jesus, did we just witness the end of a career?” Maybe all of us did. After several eternal sick-making minutes, the trainers got Wroten up and hobbling off the court—limping, but not hopping; does that bode well? A dislocated knee, a jammed ankle? I actually got up this morning and watched a few minutes of High School Sportz Blitz MegaBlast Whatever, the local highlights show, before heading off to yoga class. I’ve scanned the two daily papers, too: not a word. So maybe we didn’t see the most devastating thing ever, last night, a split second encompassing both thrill and terror, of utmost significance in the weird microcosm universe of high school. Here’s hoping.

Garfield 66, Woodinville 55.

Mama don't allow

What you need to know: my father has mastered the Internet, by which I mean that he has figured out how to buy and (finally, eventually) to sell things on eBay and Craigslist. (The balance skews way, way more to the former, and so I am expecting to inherit a veritable sea of officially sanctioned Collectibles, one day.) Anyway. Dad's selections from the wide wide world of Web goodies, however, remain...inscrutable.

Sis says:
I talked to Dad this morning, and he had picked up a stand-up BASS on Craigslist for a steal ($695) and thinks I should learn to play.
Kim says:
ha!!! well, yeah, since you're not doing anything, right?
Sis says:
isn't that odd??
Kim says:
da-dum dum dum dum DUM dum dum dum...
Sis says:
that's EXACTLY what he did over the phone

Yes, this is entirely as random as this snippet would suggest. Neither of us plays any instrument; I muddled through two years of flute in elementary school and retained nothing, while Sis had something like a semester of Electric Piano as a freshman elective. Is Dad entertaining visions of finally launching that family jug band? Regardless, he didn't call me. I... don't know. Maybe I should start boning up on the comb-and-tissue-paper kazoo, from sheer jealousy.

A very Pagooey Chrismukkwanzukkas!

Hey everybody, it's time for Pagooey Holiday Dinner Bingo! Can also be played as a drinking game. Make yourself a card and play along, at our home or yours!

--Get mustard on festive holiday shirt: 2 points
--Arrive wearing footie pajamas: 5 points
--If you are more than two months old and arrive in footie jammies: -3 points
--Cookie wears her shiny gold pants: 5 points all
--Lob dinner roll across table like softball: 2 points
--Successfully intercept thrown roll: 5 points
--Heckle vegetarian attendee with slab of corned beef: 3 points
--Make derisive reference to my failed bacon-wrapped breadsticks/burnt offering hors d'oeuvre mishap from '02: 3 points, and for the love of little apples I AM SORRY, DAMN
--Whose wineglass is this? Oh well, it's yours now: 10 points
--Bust in on someone in the hall bathroom: 4 points
--Get busted in on, in the bathroom: 8 points, and somebody really needs to fix that lock, seriously
--Put on Stan Boreson Christmas album: 5 points
--Switch allegiances in the mashed potatoes/mashed rutabagas--combine or segregate? debate, to venomous outcry from both camps: 3 points
--Slide down iced-over back steps on ass while carrying out recycling: 6 points (warning: you will be required to repeat this story multiple times throughout evening, and lose a point with each telling)
--Cookie shouts "Turn that down, are you DEAF?": 3 points
--Busted for surreptitiously texting at dinner table: -5 points
--Whose wineglass is this? Whatever: 10 points
--Salsa dance with baby: 5 points
--Put on Dean Martin Christmas album: 5 points
--Perform "Dance of the Stepped-On Brio Train Set" in breakfast nook: 7 points
--Poppy has giggle fit easily mistaken for cardiac event: 5 points all
--Lie on floor, sporting two pieces of Hanukkah gelt like the coins on a dead man's eyes: 5 points
--Put on Otis Redding's Greatest Hits: 9 points
--Cookie shouts "Turn that down, are you DEAF?": 3 points
--Baby vomits copiously on Mr. Sis: 10 points to Mr. Sis, who made sure to keep a six-foot perimeter between himself and all children for the duration of the evening to prevent a repeat of such occurrence; hence, 5 points also to the baby, for difficulty
--Hide Mom's purse, for old times' sake: 5 points; an additional 1 point shall accrue for each five minutes' duration of her search
--Get a little weepy in kitchen, but only because you love these people SO MUCH: 7 points
--Suggest going to midnight mass: 6 points
--Actually make it to midnight mass any Christmas in previous decade: 30 points
--Change into footie pajamas before departure: 5 points
--If you are over the age of four and change into footie pajamas before departure: -3 points
--Get poured into cab or otherwise require services of a designated driver: 10 points
--Hope drool on your sweater is from baby: 2 points

I hope you and yours had as much fun as me and mine. Merry Happy Everything to one and all!

Haggy birthday

As the birthdays begin to accrue at a more alarming rate, is there any more cruel reminder than a forcible trip to the DMV? Washington State is letting some people renew by mail, now, so that you only have to appear for the photo op once a decade; this might, in fact, be worse, but I wouldn't know because I was sent no online access code. Because I moved in the last five years, or because I wear contacts, whatever, I had to go in person. The local branch of the licensing department has wonky hours, opening at 8:30 some days and 9:30 others. Today was one of the 9:30 days, I discovered when I rolled up at 8:45. Regardless, there were already 10 people lined up outside in the cold. Awesome.

We shuffled from foot to foot, leaning against the rough stuccoed wall with our coffees and books and cell phones. The locked building entrance was right next to the driveway, so watching folks pull in was at least entertaining: they'd stop to peer at the posted DMV hours, cast their eyes down the ever-expanding line, visibly mouth the obscenity of their choice, and then go park. "Is this where we get Led Zeppelin tickets?" asked a jolly bearded guy in a hat with a sparkly sequinned band. He looked like more of a Deadhead to me, but I suppose he's had to switch his affiliations. I was the only one to laugh.

When they at last let us in, we surged around the little take-a-number printer, which offered different options (renewal, exam, Other) and seemed to be spitting out different sequences of numbers. I got 005: yay! Then thirty or so of us filed in amongst the plastic chairs, and they called the first number: 300. A whispered fusillade of curses swept the room until everyone figured out the multiple sequences going on. "Threatening Department of Licensing Employees is a Crime" announced a poster on the wall. "They must have a problem with that," a woman behind me said dubiously...whereupon a loud argument immediately broke out in the next row, between a 20-something dude and a 40-something dude who accused him of "cutting! you cut in line!" as if it were the cafeteria in 4th grade. It was approximately 9:34 a.m. If I worked for the DMV I'd want to be behind bulletproof glass, like at the bank.

Next to me in the chairs, a teen girl fretted over the exam-prep booklet, absently miming the hand signals for her mother: "This is 'right turn.' This is 'left turn.' This is...I don't know." "I don't know either," her mom laughed, noshing on a bagel. "Really, you just have to know it for the test and then you won't need it," she said, drawing me into the conversation with a look. "She's right...90% of it won't ever come up again," I assured the girl, looking over her shoulder at a page full of traffic signs, arrows pointing in wild, unlikely directions.

"I just want the permit," the girl muttered, ignoring us both as the old and gabby and infirm ladies we obviously were. "If I fail again, let's not tell dad we were here this time."

This reminds me that, when I was in high school, my friend Gwyn lived on a street that happened to be part of the road-test circuit for the local DMV branch...and, as it happened, the strip right in front of her house was the designated parallel-parking site for the exam. We spent more than one afternoon, our 16th summer, kneeling backwards on her living-room couch to gawk at one or another of our classmates feverishly sawing their way into a spot, centered directly in front of the picture window. Damn, that was funny.

At last it was my turn in front of the camera. "You may smile if you wish," said the clerk, and I did, not that it matters. Because it's all digital now, they can immediately show you the picture, and they ask you: is this the photo you want to go with? I wonder if they get folks who demand retake after retake...or just burst into tears at the damage wrought by their magical Hag-Cam, because Jesus. I looked like my father in drag. I looked like a Christmas ham wearing a wig. Is this the photo you want to go with? Well, unless you can, like, tape Gillian Anderson's head on here in its place, I suppose so. "Oh, God, whatever," I said miserably, and the clerk, unmoved, pressed Print and handed me the grainy, black-and-white temporary license. You will get the real one within 30 days; if you don't, call the number on the back. Happy birthday, Ass Face! Hope the doctor didn't slap your mama!

Sweeping is not a sport, it's a chore

One more way to tell you're in Canada: Sunday afternoon, women's curling is on t.v., for hours. And there are instant replays...which are shown at regular speed.

Hoser

I'm treating myself to a pre-birthday, pre-Christmas present: a long weekend in Vancouver, BC. I'm fortifying myself against the official obligations of the holiday by lolling around with my pile of unread New Yorkers, ordering room service, and enjoying other totally unnecessary indulgences like three hours of spa treatments this morning. I now have a very glamorous manicure with which to type this blog entry. Also they used a chocolate-scented body scrub on me at some point, and I kind of totally want to eat my own arm, still.

I've mentioned my infatuation with Vancouver before, I think. It's a few hours' drive from Seattle, an easy road trip; the surrounding mountains and water are familiar, and then the Canadianness is just foreign enough. A geological age or so ago, Vancouver marked my first trip off of U. S. soil. I was 19 (Canadian drinking age!); I drove up with Dave Wong in an illegally rented car that smelled of dog and orange soda. (We weren't old enough to rent it ourselves; his older sister drove it jerkily off the Rent-A-Wreck lot and he climbed behind the wheel, like, around the corner.) Of course we hadn't made hotel reservations; we ended up spending the night in a budget hotel somewhere right on the border between Gastown and Chinatown, an area informally known, at least to me, as "Junkietown." It was summer, and hot; through the open room window, we could hear what sounded like a cheap Foley-artist soundtrack of sirens and bottles shattering, the occasional piercing scream. Luckily enough we were not murdered in our beds, and the episode has receeded enough in memory to be hilarious to me now. Babes in the primeval woods, seriously.

Anyway. Here are some ways in which I know I am in Canada:

• Two people already have mentioned Boxing Day plans to me. It's a real thing, here, just like in Merry Olde England!
• The little girl, maybe nine-ish, I saw coming out of a Kitsilano ski shop this afternoon, ecstatically sporting a brand-new helmet and set of ski goggles. Her father followed behind, carrying the box they'd come in. Yes, this is the frozen north!
• The television commercial in which a teen saves the day for his big brother's hockey team (filling in for the gooooalie, who bloooow ooot his knee). After the game, where do they celebrate? Tim Horton's! If only one of them said "eh," it would be an advertising...wait for it...hat trick.

This being Vancouver, the Amsterdam of North America, here are two more things that made me giggle:

• The sign outside a garden shop, announcing their Winter Pot Sale (accompanied by ceramic containers of winter pansies and purple-and-white kale. Simmer down, Cheech.)
• The non-dairy beverage alternative I spotted in the grocery store, next to the soy and almond milks: Hemp Bliss. I just bet. You know what would go great with this chocolate Hemp Bliss? Four more chocolate Hemp Blisses, dude!

Oh, Christmas tea

Last Sunday afternoon I had the privilege of attending holiday high tea at the Fairmount Olympic Hotel, with a group of ladies I mostly know from book club. The lovely Kristin recognized that no one wanted to take on the extra responsibility of hosting, during December, but thought we could still get together and be fussed over by professionals, with the added benefit of access to downtown shopping. Genius!

I admit, I've been having a hard time getting into the holiday spirit this year. This worries me as much as anyone--Christmas brings out my most Martha-esque tendencies. I have everything Christmas. I possess a plush Santa Claus toilet-lid cover, and red and green silicone cupcake liners in which to bake sour cream-poppy seed streusel muffins on Christmas morning, and a CD of carols rendered by a Caribbean steel-drum band. Usually at this time each year my house looks like the finale of the Macy's parade without the blue police barricades. So my exhausted apathy this year is troubling, yes. I am not sure what to attribute it to; is this just more fallout from weaning myself off antidepresants this summer? I'm not depressed, but in not feeling Christmassy, I do not feel like myself, and I don't know what that means.

So it was more meaningful to me than the other ladies might have guessed, to walk into Seattle's swankiest classic hotel and be smacked with a double-barrelled Christmas blast. The Olympic is the closest thing we have to The Plaza, and it did not disappoint; it was like dropping into a 1930s movie musical, or the Warbucks mansion at the finale of Annie. Swags of pine garland and fairy lights everywhere. A massive tree at the center of the atrium, and another decked out in gold in the tearoom itself. A gingerbread rendering of the Pike Place Market in a glass case, with marzipan produce lined up in tiny rows. There was some sort of children's holiday party going on elsewhere in the hotel, too, and so all around us were little girls in red velvet dresses and little boys in crisp white shirts and dark ties, on high Good Behavior Alert not only for the environment but because of Santa's imminent final accounting. Several of us, arriving early, went looking for an ATM, and that was also "fancy": hidden away in a discreet alcove and paneled in oak, with the old-timey appellation "Miniature Bank."

It was good that we'd obtained some cash beforehand, because the special holiday tea was sort of psychotically expensive if you stopped to think about it. We were a large group, and so the included service cost brought our tab to $75 a head. Would I have gone, if I'd anticipated that? Probably not...so I am glad I didn't know. Because it ended up being entirely worth it. We had white linen and real silver, delicate floral china and our own individual teapots. Individual crystal cruets of raspberry jam and clotted cream stood at the head of each place setting. And at that price, they keep the wee goodies coming for as long as you're willing to sit there. A polite young man in a gold vest hovered nearby, with a tray and a pair of little silver tongs to hand out as many tiny open-faced sammiches as we could stand, each no bigger than my thumb. There was a smoked salmon triangle that simply dissolved on the tongue, and quarter-sized rounds of toast crowned with curried chicken salad. One savory had shavings of black truffle; one sweet was dusted with gold flake--two outrageous delicacies I'd never consumed before. I ATE GOLD. It was awesome. We gossiped and sipped tea and daintily ate many hundreds of tea goodies; we were all also on our best behavior, and managed not to knock anything over or guffaw too openly, there in the Georgian Room...which is lovely, all pale yellow with scads of white ornamental molding, like dining inside a wedding cake.

It reminded me of being a little girl, actually...all that dazzle, the giddy tension of being in a place and a situation 100% nicer than the rest of your everyday life. We went to some sort of Santa Claus brunch at the Space Needle, once, when I was a kid--I remember it being very early morning, still nearly dark as we revolved slowly above the Christmas-lit city, eating pigs-in-a-blanket and nervously awaiting the arrival of St. Nick, the guest of honor. There are pictures of us, me and Sis in matching (!) outfits that were actually Easter dresses from the previous spring--red and white calico patterned, but by December growing a bit alarmingly short. We are showing a lot of leg, for 8 a.m. Matching Dorothy Hamill haircuts also, I probably don't need to add. Anyway. We were excited, and impressed, and anxious in a largely good way, Christmas on the line and Santa keeping a watchful eye.

I haven't felt like that in years...but this was close. Worth every penny, and with the added benefit of having that salmon, boy. I would rather have poked out my own eye, as a kid...but after sampling that with an adult's palate, I can now die a happy woman. A holiday miracle indeed!

I don't feel tardy!

Nor, you know, two years shy of 40.

Anyway...so, the mostly reunited Van Halen, David Lee Roth Original Recipe version, is playing Seattle tonight. No, I don't have tickets...but I greatly enjoyed a local radio station's Nine-at-Nine journey in the wayback machine this morning, to 1984. They featured some Prince and some Pretenders, and of course "Jump," from the eponymous VH album. Ohhh, "Jump." I rocked out some, in the car--very cautiously, due to the torrential downpour we're having this morning. The DJ could then not be dissuaded from putting on "Panama," at least for a moment. Ten at Nine, then.

(Aside: last week I was giving a presentation in a team meeting, my laptop connected to the conference room projector. There's a way to turn off the e-mail pop-ups when you're in presentation mode, but I hadn't bothered. So it was my own fault when a missive from the concert-ticket alias appeared in the lower-right corner of my screen and one of the editors could not restrain himself from shouting aloud, "VAN HALEN TICKETS!")

Since I made such inroads into mortifying adolescent confessions last month, I'll just admit here that, yeah, I find David Lee Roth...compelling, let's say. Maybe not so much now; you don't know where he's been. Though you can well imagine. But 1980s David Lee Roth! With the hair! Doing the splits in his neon zebra-striped leggings! Before flying around above the stage in a harness! Come on: that's awesome. He was clearly totally insane, in a nonthreatening candy-colored AquaNet way. Other metal bands were Scary; Van Halen, with Roth out front, was just Crazy! Fun Crazy!

Didn't he break from the band, right about that time, to launch his solo career? I vividly remember his cover of Louis Prima's "Just a Giggolo," not least because my grandpa saw the video of this on MTV and was delighted: "Now that's music," he insisted, as Dave leapt around in parachute pants with some bikini vixens. "That there is a song." Grandpa found David Lee Roth tonsorially confusing, maybe, but he knew how to swing. It was a point in his favor.

I should also note that I loooooooved "Jump" in part because I associated it with...oh, God...the figure skating world I'd developed a complete obsession with at roughly this time. Van Halen, the perfect accompaniment to launching a triple salchow! Oy. I am physically scrubbing at my face, right now, at this recollection. The 80s were a weird, weird, weird time, whether you were 14 or not.

So. No, I'm not going to the show. Probably it would also be awfully loud in there, I'm thinking. But I am pleased that it is, that it exists. Maybe 10 years ago I saw David Lee Roth, on an early version of one of those "Totally Awesome Eighties!!" compilation shows. At the time, he looked eerily as if he was steps away from sitting on Ventura Boulevard with a cardboard sign reading "Will RAWK For Food." So I'm glad that he's back with the band and touring, now, happy that he's got a gig to keep him in sandwiches and Spandex for at least the forseeable future. You go, Diamond Dave.