said while sitting on the toilet after doing "poops":

"mom, may i be excused?"

the huntington library birthday pictures by owen

maison guadin served at maison fidler

for a brief moment michael and i had plans to cash in miles and spend a few days this week in paris over spring break, mostly so i could have macaroons from pâtisserie Ladurée on my birthday. this wonderfully decadent but ultimately impossible idea fell through but, rather than skip the parisian experience althogether michael arranged for his french colleague eric to bring some macaroons from his local confectioner in chateudun. "laudree, that's what we give the tourists" he scoffed and brought michael instead three ribboned boxes of delectable gems. though they were a little rough for the travel: france-sweden-states they were a rare and suprising treat--hints of nutmeg in the vanilla, coffee cream, lemon tart, and creme-de-menthe hiding in a few of the chocolates. mmmmmm!

bankers" just wanna have fun"

without getting into a long explanation of our banking woes with wells fargo (involving cut equity lines and NSF notices and letters that came four days after valid transfers were made) i, along with most of our nation, am officially "over" banks. it started after owen and i spent the morning in our branch clearing up the trickle down of the credit crisis in our home and ended here at the riverside branch where i went to make a cash deposit to balance our account.

already frustrated i apparently walked into a "flashback party" in wells fargo. at the door i was greeted by a 20something girl with a clipboard wearing a headband and sweats a la olivia newton john who i swear was going to lead me in jumping jacks when all i wanted to do was rather unobtrusively make a deposit. on my through the ropes to the teller i passed by three girls whose makeup and hair was a sad stab at cyndi lauper holding neon balloons dressed for a vh1 'i heart the eighties' video. i finally resach my teller only to find he is also in a reverse-sweatshirt standing under a turquoise xeroxed sign reading "wells fargo: we heart the 80s." and then as i gave him my cash to deposit says in this "dude, valley-boy" kind of voice (meanwhile dramarama is playing in the background) "hey, did you know you're way overdrawn on your account?" and which point i want to cry, scratch the record and say "dude, you all f&*ed up and that's why i'm depositing a wad of cash, in person, to a teller or rather rick springfield wannabe." instaed i give him my deposit, ask for a printout and leave, but not before the clipboard girl and two balloon girls rushed to the door, opened it and sang out: "have a tubular day."

and no, i did not make any of this up. i mean, what ever happened to casual friday or hawaiian shirt day? are the flashbacks supposed to make the foreclosed, defaulted, and unemployed bfeel like it's all just a bad dream? and the fact that no one at the bank appeared to have been old enough to have witnessed aqua net or legwarmers futher unnerved me. and i know when i walked out and just grimaced at the tubular girls they all went valley girl: "whatEVer what' the matter with HER?" but the "have a nice day" bobblehead-ish atmosphere actually just made me cry--as if the aig bonuses and "sorry there's nothing we can do even though we screwed up" selfrighteousness all culminated in this flippant flashback--and feel not at all tubular.

"dad, your car got crashed up!"

remember the white towel and owen down the street incident? well the whole thing started because i had to move michael's car and came in through the garage and didn't re-latch the front door. apparently, while the car was parked out back it got crunched by a freight-sized moving truck. we came home last night to find this on michael's driver's side door. the good news is that the driver left a note. the bad news is:owen, however, can't wait until daddy gets home and they can both get out their tools and "fix the broken car."

bad mom

this afternoon while owen was busy playing trains in his room i jumped in the shower for a much needed scrub. let me preface this by saying that all of the downstairs doors have top-locks and the office has an owen-proof handle and owen's pretty good about letting me know if he needs anything.

so, scrub scrubbing away and owen comes in my room: "mom, do you want to say hi to molly and stella?".

and i think, oh no, neighbors at the door so i tell owen: "well, mommy's still in the shower so tell them we'll come out in ten minutes."

so owen walks away.

scrub, scrub, uhoh. wait a minute. how would owen tell them that. all the windows are closed, doors are locked. . . so i quickly jump out of the shower, grab a towel (meanwhile my phone is ringing) and run out the front door--which is WIDE OPEN! and i remember that i had moved michael's car because of street sweepers and came back through the garage and i never re-latched the door!

now i'm running outside in my towel and there's owen down the street, on the sidewalk with sierra sitting right next to him peering over our neighbor's patio (in the next building over) chatting away.

apparently molly saw owen walking down the street, when she didn't see me called, but reportedly owen stayed on the sidewalk and sierra just sat down between him, going back once to the house and then came right back by his side. when owen came home with toweled mommy and i asked him why he would go out the front door without mommy he innocently replied, "but i asked you." and well, he did.

supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

is our new favorite word. ever since we had a mary poppins movie night, which turned into a movie weekend, we can't stop singing julie andrews. after going back and replaying "let's go fly a kite" and "spoon full of sugar" half a dozen times we ended up downloading the cd and listening to it on our commute. so this morning the first thing owen does when we get to nana & papa's is to try to fingerspell super.... well you know the rest. and he told miss sherry it was his new word. so if you ever find yourself at a loss for words. . .

seashell collecting

for the last couple weeks it seems that all i'd been doing is commuting out to riverside and grading papers (while owen watched mighty machines and played airport), so since there's a lovely lull until final papers come in next week when owen woke me up at about 7:30 this morning shouting "mommy! let's go get seashells!" we dropped everything; by 8:30 we had our bucket, a couple of towels, and two red shovels packed in the car. we grabbed muffins and strawberries from zinc cafe (mommy of course needed a triple cappuccino) and made our way down to laguna main beach.

here's owen's photoessay of our morning:

hockey quarterfinals

Was at the local team's (Färjestad) quarter-final game against Brynäs on Wednesday. We won game number 4 (best of 7) with the score 2-1. So now on to the semi-finals, where we are awaiting the next challenger.

The game was slow due to the number of fights, which are more tolerated now that the playoffs have started.

Biff Rydberg

dinner the other evening. 'Biff' meaning beefsteak, and 'berg' is a mountain, so I guess literally this is a mountain of beef. They throw in a mountain of fried potatoes, a raw egg yolk, some sour cream, and some fried onions which you are supposed to mix altogether. quite good minus the sour cream.

mother and son

malissa took this amazing picture of michael and connie after marilyn's service on sunday...

a pause: "just love me"

today owen and i finally paused after an emotional and hectic couple of weeks--the moment of pause was definite: he screamed after his ears popped and didn't stop screaming until we ran to CVS to get some benadryl to relieve the sinus pressure in his ears and head. he had been coughing and congested for a week now, and the doctor's advice was a spoonful of honey (of course i had to sing some mary poppins) and if necessary some benadryl. the entire time he was crying, furious and demanding to know WHY his ears hurt so badly, his only real request of me was this: "mommy, just love me."

nana's here now giving him a bath and i've got 7 essays left to grade and only three classes left to prep for and this pause seems to be the moment i'd been looking for all week when i could thoughtfully reflect on all that had happened in this tragic week and make some sense of it all.

and the facts are these: last thursday michael got a call from his dad that his aunt marilyn had suddenly passed away. friday we got confirmation that there would be a service in washington. saturday we made plans to be with his family and leave owen with my parents. sunday we flew up to seattle and monday we spent the day in mourning with his family--the sisters, children, grandchildren, parents, sons, and the nexus of love that grew from there. tuesday michael went to sweden and i came back home.

my memories of marilyn are like snapshots--a smile in connie's kitchen; a hug at diane's after eating one of mike's feasts; a glimpse at my own son as she found michael's beautiful features in his face. she is and was a beautiful woman and i am blessed to overlap in her circle of love and family.

and for me, rather than a bible verse that reminds us all that we are on borrowed time with our loved ones i keep thinking of virginia woolf; rather, mrs. dalloway--this day, this moment in june, what she loved was life. and i think it's the same. i think that what we all mean when we say death makes us appreciate life, loss makes us thankful for love is what woolf strived for as an artist, as a writer: live for this otherwise unextraordinary day, because our connections with one another are in themselves extraordinary. it's what owen demanded of me today: just love me.

bleak roe

A lot of people ask what exactly I eat for meals here, so I'll try to document some of my meals. For starters tonight, I had some of this bleak roe, exactly how it is pictured here... with some cream cheese, toasted bread, and pickled red onions. Main course was Angus beef. no picture needed ;)