owen had his first one on one with a baby, a real bright-eyed gurgling giggling cooing wonder last week. and he was quite fixated, of course, on baby sakura's hair. and then as his centeroftheworldness felt a bit off kilter he did a toddler "aaaahhhh" and then yank! and then wait and baby cried and mommy was not happy and daddy scooped him up for some "simmer down" and a good talk-to about being gentle and being hurtful. but really, could she be lovelier?
baby sakura
"why should they grow up, and lose all that?" (v. woolf)
i'm working on to the lighthouse this afternoon and i always pause at this passage which i confess to wishing just a wee bit when i see owen play with such joy and abandon:
Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older! or Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters.
and then of course here is owen yesterday at disneyland sad because he didn't meet the height requirement for the sea jelly parachutes, and then suddenly joyful as he shouts "but mommy i AM bigger! i AM!". and what is a mother to do?
my guy
just cleaning out my desktop getting ready to do a little writing and found this taken from my phone--i think he had just fallen off his chair and was having some "medicine juice" and snuggling mommy on the couch. he just looks so sweet and contemplative--a perfect image to get some contempative work of my own done. sigh.
of cabbages and kings
i'm upstairs skimming my notated mrs. dalloway while m&o play downstairs and came across this underlined passage. wonderfully fun (from peter walsh during clarissa's party while listening to sally):
But no; he did not like cabbages; he preferred human beings.
fidfam good eats
michael launched the week of good eats by making his slow cooker (aka good old fashioned crock pot) tuscan pot roast spooned over parpadelle noodles and topped with some shaved p-r cheese. dinner was preceded by a tasty bruschetta i made by mixing up some heirloom tomatoes (including a deeply flavorful purple tomato and surprisingly sweet green cherry tomatoes) with the usual suspects: balsamic vinegar, EVOO, kosher salt, fresh ground peper and a chiffonade of some fresh basil from our patio. i added ciglinii mozerella balls and let the mixture marinade before spooning on some garlic-rubbed and toasted rosemary cibatta bread. the entire experience was even tastier as we shared it with friends tomoko & matty (and baby sakura smiled and cooed and aahed--but more on her later) and plenty of wine.
last night i made a roasted barbecue apricot chicken which had a nice savory tangy flavor to it--i tossed in some dried apricots which married well with the tomatoes during the roasting process. but ultimately it wasn't that exciting as michael said, "well, it's chicken." however, for lunch today i sliced some of the leftover chicken and spooned some of the tomato/apricot concentrate on top which had turned into a great chutney along with some crisp romaine and some avocado. so i'd make the recipe again just for the day-later sandwich.
tonight we're going out to our favorite local sushi bar to enjoy their speciality--the kanpai roll which features spicy tuna and seared albacore with ponsu and roasted onions. owen no longer wants his kid's meal chicken and veggie bowl but demands sushi and can eat at least four california rolls in a sitting--as well as pop a dozen edamamme and an endless chopstick-fest of sushi rice.
and here's a sneak peek at what's on the menu next week: michael's banana curry (photos taken from our curry fest in july) which is just an amazing excursion into nutty and pungent spices married with fresh cilantro and mellowed by sweet bananas. as with most things michael approaches cooking very systematically--he has been working his way through a fun curry book we have and i've enjoyed sampling his vegetable kashmiri as well as an eggplant curry. he uses whole spices and grinds them all per recipe and then demonstrates model mise-en-place. this week we're trying it over tj's thai lime rice and a dollop of greek yoghurt. mmmm. can't wait!
"pumpkin cupcakes with yummy raisins and more and more nuts"
after asking for "cupcakes" all week owen & i made muffins from the yummy trader joe's pumpkin bread mix yesterday morning (i bought four boxes for my pantry--it's seasonal and sooo yummy with some cranberries and pecans and is a quick fix for my muffin cravings). i inheirited my love of breakfast from my mom but i also have her to thank for many happy memories of sitting on the kitchen counter or standing on the backs of chairs while she baked. of course i did not inheirit her need to precisely sift flour ;) you can see owen is quite the sous chef and was a surprisingly careful stirrer and poured "more and more nuts" very carefully in the bowl. he then sat in front of the oven to wait for them to bake all the while saying "are they cooking yet? are they done yet?". and then he ate three with breakfast.
last night we picked michael up from SNA and had a great bench spot watching people go down the escalator. for ten minutes owen pointed to everyone from an obese elderly man in sneakers to an OC diva in stilettos and shouted "THAT's not daddy!" and then "THAT's not daddy either!". we finally identified the correct daddy and are now enjoying coffee and the glorious norwegian weather he brought home with him.
when you go on a cruise to alaska
and you're one of three couples under fifty, and the glaciers are
spectacular, and your boyfriend takes the mike after the lounge singer set--well you get engaged. or at least if you're our sister missy and her boyfriend kalon. congratulations! owen & i apparently timed our trip up to the fids just in time to hear the announcement :) here are some snaps--flashing the big rock; future bride & maid of honor; and kalon with some bubbly.
work party
I was invited to a work party at the RR site in Tenfjord... all of the consultants were invited actually, but as the timing was bad for a lot of them (on their way home for the week and/or weekend), I was the only consultant to make it. They did plan on a bbq out on some island, which would have been cool, but the weather has been so bad that it was unfavorable (even unsafe) to take a boat ride, so as the person who arranged the whole thing told me -- Norwegians always have backup plans.
They had the party in the cafeteria at the office in Tenfjord, and actually had entertainment lined up too. They did barbeque, some chicken, veggies, and of course had potato side-dishes.. food was good.. then after the food we had a Norwegian comedian.. of course, I didn't understand him, but tried to laugh when everyone else was.. I did catch on that he was from Alesund and was making fun of the hicks from Tenfjord.. somebody told me he was just starting out in the entertainment business, and his mother was actually a famous Norwegian comedian..
Next up was a one-man band who sung a lot of songs from the 60s/70s... Beatles, CCR, ABBA, Carol King.. stuff where everyone knew the words so they could sing along.. again.. all in a cafeteria, so very surreal. but there was plenty of beer and wine and cognac. after two drinks, they started charging, but I always had someone buying me a drink. they seemed very appreciative that I showed up, and there were plenty of people who asked me the usual very polite questions about what I thought about Norway, and how I thought things were going, and talked about their planned trips to America.. I told them to go see their relatives in the Northwest, they wouldn't be dissapointed.. sure New York is great to visit.. why go visit Florida, when they could go to California.. and Texas should be avoided at all costs.
Here are some pictures from the night.. 
The party scene
The Comedian
The singer -- maybe you can see his outline past all the beer cans.
"tidmouth sheds so far away"
owen breaks into the thomas & friends engine roll call song at least eight times a day--i finally caught some of it on video while he dances around grandpa's backyard singing and showing his new train rosie (with bill & ben, toby, iron bert and 'arry of course) the "tracks."
trains watching planes
owen lining up his thomas friends (and his tj's applejuice box which we managed to get through security) to watch the planes from gate 10 while we wait to depart from SNA to SEA
spørsmål
... it means question.. pronounced "spursmool".. something like that. one of the few Norwegian words that I have picked up on. I was asked to attend a two hour meeting yesterday that was entirely in Norwegian... but was asked a couple of times for my input after someone was kind enough to repeat the spørsmål in english..
curb appeal
on thursday we packed up and headed south to san diego and helped uncle sal and auntie jenn settle into their new home. while owen kept himself busy in the vacant "old home" living room with puzzles and cars sal & cara scrubbed out several years of wear & tear. but moving is hard work!
eventually we got to enjoy the new digs. congratulations sal & jenn on your new home!
puzzle master
last week we discovered puzzles--the nine piece chunky double sided beginner jigsaws (see video below). this week we've moved on to 24-piece jigsaws and i have officially declared owen a puzzle master. he can assemble the niner completely on his own from opening the box to clicking in the last piece in five minutes. after a few days of learning the "parts" he can finish the 24 piece on his own--which i discovered to my amazement after opening the box for him and instrucitng him to sort pieces while i make breakfast. from the kitchen i heard: "where does this piece go? right here." as he picked up piece by peaches. by the time peaches and bananas were sliced and vanilla soy poured over his cereal the "cars" puzzle was done. here is some pictoral proof of his promotion to PM.
the "puzzle train":
getting ready to begin puzzle number five:
me in paris
With the weather being so awful here, not taking any recent pictures becuase I've turned my weekends into working weekends, I decided to show some old photos. I recently swapped photos with a co-worker when we went to Paris back in Oct of last year, so these are new to me...
pic of the Eiffel tower and me on the eiffel tower.
nice win by the Dawgs yesterday against Boise St.
76
degrees farenheit and a lovely breeze. it seems the heat has broken and everyone is coming out of their caves. i'm sitting up in my corner office suite with the window open and the hummingbird wind chimes have finally replaced the buzzzz of twenty air conditioner units simultaneously growling through the back alley. i hear neighbor's voices saluting one another as if we'd all been on
long holiday and are welcoming each other back. with the wind, like the other mary herself, came mary ann. to celebrate the shift we enjoyed blackened salmon and calamari on our favorite al fresco taco patio-- here's a shot from my camera pic which tends to darken and overexpose but the effect on this picture i think is lovely--owen's hair looks radiantly copper and his lips are saturated and ruddy. we were out with the birds and i discovered owen shares my fear and awe of those winged creatures. he vascillated from "mommy hold me!" as a dozen birds perched in the giant oak over our table and "mommy look! the bird has three toes!" as he dropped rice and cheesy chips to share with his new friends. ah, speaking of birds, back to dalloway--who herself had “A touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious.”
new season of sesame street
so one of the good things that happens when you're stuck inside all day is that you get to watch more sesame street. it's our favorite, and the new season so far has been awesome: an episode all about tricycles (we're still working on how to pedal) and my favorite so far, an episode all about triangles featuring james bluntsinging "my triangle" with telly
one more reason to love sesame street and perhaps develop a little crush on james. and last week much to my joy we got to dance to r.em. singing furry happy monsters and just when you thought all the singing couldn't get better oscar did a grouchy version of ymca about mud. so i think that's it--we just all need to run outside and turn on the fire hydrants and cool off or just watch more sesame street.
yup, it's really really hot
so it seems redundant to even mention the weather. or the fact that it's a furnace. you know like when you open the oven after it's been preheating at 450 and you peek in and get that whoooooosh of hot air. yup. but it really is just hot--i'd been obsessively watching the temperatures, here, in riverside, san diego and aalesund but at a certain point it's just too hot to matter. but when it gets hot like this for what seems like day after day after day it's the same as when it rains and rains and rains-- i start to wonder if it will always be like this and then of course you think about polar bears and al gore and it makes you really really sad and then of course you run your air conditioning nonstop. but today the hot just seemed like it was doing just that--permanently altering the course of well, things. and this is why i think so--my neighbor was out at three in the afternoon apparently grilling. and when i peeked out because i was convinced there was a fire in the hills he just smiled with a large glass of wine and seemed to just have coals on the fire for the purpose of standing outside and said "yeah, it's hot. i didn't think anyone would be outside" and then he smiled. i don't know, it just was odd.ut he was right. both times we took sierra out for his p&p stroll the only sound you heard was the humm of air conditioners and there were no skateboarders, bikers, joggers, tricyclers, nor yappy dogs anywhere to be seen. and no hummingbirds either. of course the nectar is no longer red but a kind of urine yellow. ugh. but it does seem like the heat just evaporated everyone and everythign away . . .
but i think it did break. i opened all of the windows, turned the fans on high and despite the fact that the temperature went up a couple of degrees in the house i feel like i can breathe again. for dinner i steamed some broccoli with some lemon pepper pasta and shrimp and it was yummy and owen discovered he loved "shrimpies" but then the entire house smelled like broccoli steam. i hate that. so hot or no hot i had to get some fresh air in here.
i guess i just start thinking of this filmstrip i saw in the fifth grade or so about this girl who was waiting for the sun--they were in this place or planet where it had only ever rained and the sun was supposed to come out. anyway this one girl believed in it most and was so excited and some mean boy locked her in this room with just slats for windows right before the sun came out. and she missed it. and then somebody let her out afterwards. and she went outside into the rain. and that was it. that was it! so has anyone else seen this filmstrip? it haunts me, it does. anyway, m. hope you get to see the sunshine and we get some rain.
please excuse the incredibly banal post. but all of this heat has sucked the writing life out of me so perhaps now i can get past the hot. oh, and i haven't recharged the camera batteries in a few days. too hot, you know. anyhow, if you're reading: thank you.
quick hike
there was a break in the weather! so I got out for a quick stoll... since today is sunday, they closed down the food fair here in Alesund, but I took a picture of the tents put up for the occasion. I hiked up the side of the mountain and beat the incoming storm. I've included a self taken photo, and a pic of the town being hit w/ brief sun before the dark clouds take over.. enjoy.
in-doors due to weather
i'm trapped inside because it is pouring rain outside.. I planned on doing some hiking and picture taking this morning, but was stopped in my tracks when I got down to the bridge when it started a downpour. I decided to head back and try again in a few hours. I get some 5 minute breaks, but then the clouds open up again.. There is plenty of work work to do though, so I've been doing that in the meantime.
I did get to watch the Huskies yesterday morning though thanks to slingbox/dvr -- good game.. too bad for those cougs though!
"i did it! i did it!"
since owen has completely forsaken naptime usually around 3 or so one or both of us hits that cranky wall--especially if we've been inside all day. today i insisted on some quiet time upstairs & left o. to entertain himself "quietly" in his room (which i'm now convinced needs to be routine). as part of our homegoods loot i found this double-sided chunky 9 piece richard scarry puzzle (for $3.99! i'm definitely going back to scavenge some more designs) that we put it together a couple of times last night. to my surprise, or not, owen managed to put all the pieces together without any help from mommy. he was so thrilled that he kept at it switching back and forth between the motorcycle and the fire engine side--and after quiet time was over wanted to bring it downstairs for more. here's mommy catching owen putting the last piece on the puzzle:
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