Spring in my Step

Seasonal Affective Disorder
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. The birds are chirping, will you be my friend? and the sun is lighting the canvas behind a pale, light gray/blue sky. I'll take it. January and early February were beyond miserable. All the mountain passes nearby have been closed several times because of avalanche danger.

Holy Son's weekly snowboarding school pilgrimage was great but he claimed there was almost too much snow, although he said he did manage to nail a back grab or whatever it's called. I wouldn't know because I don't speak Snowboard. I just nod my head and pretend I've understood what he's excitedly imparted to me. So apparently they were knee deep in powder and it was too much. What boarder complains of that? Especially on the West Coast where you take the rain and slush with the snow and pretend its a stellar run.

But enough about snow. With the longer days equating to brighter mornings when we drive to school, and the advent of winter and spring breaks upon us, I can't help but think spring.

Even our one superstar Venus Flytrap, John, thinks so. He's been stuck beneath a fluorescent bulb - lucky dog - light is one thing we lack in these parts, artificial and otherwise. So all that warmth and brightness had him sprouting a big tall flower. It will soon be time to move him outside, now that nicer weather is upon us and Holy Son's science experiment is almost over. Feeding John, Jake, Jim and Joe has been interesting though. I've learned mealworms don't fight as much as earthworms. And that you need to squeeze the cricket a bit and then hold it down firmly in the trap before it closes and even then, wait a few more seconds before attempting to extract the tweezers. Crickets are feisty and quick and they'll fight to the bitter end for life and limb, as necessary.

Of course the greatest irony is that all those disgusting giant house and callobious spiders that set up house and home downstairs this fall are nowhere to be found. Who can blame them though ~ I'd be making tracks to the Bahamas to escape gross Seattle winters, too, if I was able.

Yes, thoughts of spring have sprung in the Schmidthouse and so, too, a manic schedule. Let me qualify that - more manic than the already manic schedule.

The Comedy of Errors
Northrup Frye dubbed spring to be the season of comedy. I think he was onto something because running around with my head cut off will be nothing short of comedic to those who will be watching from the wings. Like my poor, long-lost friend, Cor, who is coming to visit the last week of February in what might prove to be the busiest, logistically speaking. I will take her to see Pike Place fish market and ride the Monorail. It will be her own week's version of Planes, Trains, Automobiles ~ because the rest of the week, she'll be riding shotgun while we ferry the kids all over hell's ten and a half acre.

That's because the kids have each been cast in spring community and school plays March/April/May, with rehearsals starting today.

That's a total of three plays, on top of the regularly scheduled weekly programming of Brownies, Scouts, Irish Dance, soccer and ballet. There might even have been two more spring church plays on Sundays had I not schemed to blow the UU-boat and Jonas the whaler up and off the schedule. I don't know much German but I do know how to say das ist verruckt, which sounds similar enough to what I might have said in English to convey the gist of my newfound mania.

The kids are tickled though. Holy Son landed a good size role in Romeo and Juliet as a Shakespeare in the Park sarcastic commentator. It's his biggest role yet - 25+ lines - and I'm tickled because he'll getting his first taste of Shakespeare. Or Marlowe. Or Francis Bacon. Or whoever he was. Or wasn't. That is the question.

Holy Daughter, not to be outdone, nailed a very funny line in her audition so they have decided, rather astutely I believe, to cast her as the punctuation punchline snail in Sleeping Beauty. So she'll get the last laugh in each of her scenes, which is perfect for her....she has a natural sense of comedic timing. She will also be doing a group performance role in her school production of Pinocchio as one of Geppetto's puppets.

So between juggling those three rehearsals, on top of her Irish dancing in prep for the Seattle St. Patrick's Day parade, and ballet and Brownie cookie sales deliveries and spring soccer; and his Scouts and winter/spring camping and cello lessons and soccer and four hours of homework a night, I'm thinking they won't have um....much time to get in trouble. Mind you, neither will Holy Hub and I.

It's all part of my master plan to have them fall into bed by 8pm each night, meek and spent. This plan will invariably backfire, of course. I'll be the one falling into bed by 8pm - they'll be like revved up thespians who stole the second wind from beneath Aladdin's carpet as they beg for time to 'unwind and relax'. Code word: Wii.

That's right we are now official members of the new millennium. Wii'ved joined the Wiivolution and even video-game phobic Holy Mom (OK, so what if the last game I played was Ms. Pac-man, at least I played that so there) has occasionally been known to get in on the action. Never mind that Holy Daughter kicks my petunias in bowling. She is wickedly good. She maneuvers her aim this way and that and then delivers a throw that would knock even good ole Freddy on his backside. I ended up doing what I think it a superbly-executed release that always turns out to be a backwards throw that hits all the animated Wii spectators. They point and laugh at me, as does Holy Daughter, and the whole thing is rather humiliating, in an cartoony and thus, unreal kind of way.

Even Holy Hub can't touch her score and he can Wii pitch at 90 miles an hour. It's pretty funny ~ this business of eight year olds being far more technologically-proficient than adults.

But that's not the end of the technology story. We also bought a couple of new Samsung flat panel TVs - one for the master bedroom and one for the kitchen/family room, where the hole in the wall has been fairly begging for us to place one. I ended up getting Best Buy to price match Amazon - they claim it's against their store policy nationwide and that Amazon is a dot.com not a store retailer, but Google Best Buy price match Amazon for sport, and you'll see it's happening everywhere. Even here, in Amazon land. That was one of the many arguments I wadded up in my tenacious little straw and spit back out at them. We ended up saving $400 which equates to a free Wii, games and controllers so it was all good.

OK, and since I'm feeling magnanimous today, I'll even admit to our last purchase. Two brand-new Toto toilets to replace our old ones. Is that fascinating blog reading or what? Judging by the kind of Google search queries of my new and unsuspecting visitors, I would have to say yeah - inquiring minds do want to know these things.

Lucky Charms
Anyways, back to the crazy schedule for a moment. If you're a regular lurker on this site or my old site, you may recall me blogging about my new gold parade dreams. Well, guess what, I may not be a Red Hot Mama yet, but I would bet even they had to start somewhere. Check this out - I actually get to be in the St. Patrick's Day parade too ~ showing off my Mighty Quinn roots. Never mind that I'm adopted and so, thus, not technically Irish. I happen to believe Irishness is not so much a nation state as it is a state of mind.

Or so I will be convinced after drinking a couple of pints of beer for courage that day. Speaking of Irish and drinks, there used to be a day and age when I thought people from Ireland were called Iris - I thought the sh was just the Guinness slur that was added for good measure and froth.

Harmless slurs aside, I may rope Holy Son into joining along in the festivities with some of his friends. We could all dress in green and go as Gang Green. Spectators will be green with envy or some other reaction, I'm sure. Holy Daughter will be decked out in her Irish dancing gear in prep for an afternoon dance performance following the parade. And yes, I'll take pictures and post them here for posterity. Actually Holy Hub will take pictures because I know he'll want no part of the parade, save the pre and post Guiness drinking, of course.

So now I need a new dream to add to my Top 10 dreams list. I think it will end up being journey related. I'm always scheming and dreaming about new places to go rather than things to do. Like spring break. We're busy planning a fam damily getaway to Vegas but I haven't officially booked it yet, mostly because I feel like Vegas is been there, done that. I haven't been in 15 years so it's changed wholesale, but still I'm less than enthusiastic. I'd much rather we hooked up our GPS and tent trailer and set our sights due southeastlyish enroute the great American whirlwind road trip. Like to Yosemite or to Zion National Park or Yellowstone or some equally wild, west locale. Not that Vegas isn't the wildest place in the west but it's urban and my brokeback heart is craving rural.

Speaking of brokeback and hearts, I had a quasi-interview with a pharmaceutical company a couple of weeks ago. Long story on how the hell I, hater of drug dealers, ended up making nice with them, but what I realized in that fatefully-aborted job prospect moment was that I really do not need to sell my integrity to become gainfully employed. And I certainly don't need to get dressed up to schmooze a pharma suit dudes when I should be working on the big kahuna headhunter instead. I've decided I'm going to scheme my dream part-time, lucrative, summer and school holidays off job and paste it on a four leaf clover on my bulletin board, or I'll put it in my universe in-box and then see what shows up. God only knows what will happen, right?

I do have a couple of prospects in my industry - fingers crossed, but both would entail a ton of work and probably too much travel. To say nothing of the kids' after school schedules.

If nothing materializes right away, so be it. I suspect 'll be too busy living and volunteering at the local theatre and lamenting, oh, home-o, home-o, wherefore art my home-o....to notice anyways.

Got Work.

Yahoo, I got a job today! Which is just terrific because blogging, quite frankly, sucks.

I’ve lost two posts this past week because seconds before I would go to upload, I’d lose the whole bloody thing. Bloody as in lovely words killed by the random exception of fatal errors. I’ve never understood that fatal exception thing. The fatal part, yes, because it killed my beloved words. But the exceptional error part seems so oxymoronic. It pisses me off. Anyways, I’m stupid that way. Blogging without saving or typing it first in Word. There are worse things I suppose...I just can’t think of any in the moment.

So yeah, I got a job. I’ll be lending my meeting and event skills to helping design global sustainability forums this spring for a non-profit organization renowned for its work in international microfinance.

All Work, No Pay

The pay is incredible, mostly I guess, because there actually isn’t any whatsoever attached to the job. Yes, it’s a volunteer gig, that much is true, but I’m following the law of karma. Meaning what goes around, comes around. And so, believing strongly as I do in the notions of paying it forward and that money has soul, I’m going to do this hoping something wonderful my way will come. Something wonderful called gainful employment.

So even though I will be out of pocket with gas money, according to the AAA’s recent study that suggests a 20 mile trip now costs somewhere around $10.00, I am choosing to look at it as though I will be microlending my services in trust to the global village of poverty such that we we will all get fed in the long run.

I will also be taking on a part-time volunteer position doing adult education seminars for another local non-profit agency. I’m hoping to lead their immigration prep. classes if only because (a) there would be great irony in doing so and I’m nothing if not ironic; and (b) it would be terrific advance study should we end up going down the same path in the years to come. I doubt they’ll allow a resident alien to lead such classes but what they don’t know won’t hurt them. And except for the small matter that I talk funny, my alien-ness is really not all that apparent.

I’mMigration
On that note, hubby has recently begun hiding away his Canadian-ness under the need-to-know basis file category in all his conversational engagements. He has discovered, (rightly so I think), that planting his Canadian roots into a conversation is a bit like throwing weed killer on a dandelion.

Well-meaning locals try desperately to establish some grounds for connection when you mention you’re from Canada. As in, “oh, I’ve been to Vancouver, nice city.” This next awakens the need to recall some other Canadianism gleaned from the world, invariably leading to, “so, I bet it's cold where you're from.” And then the conversation will trail off and so will they, to the couple a few feet over who, lo and behold, attended the same high school and who share exact same worldview and history. It's all very understandable, I enter into the same kind of inane conversation with Koreans I meet; but according to hubby, it's also strategically avoidable for Canadians.

Assimilation is a mandatory requirement in American immigration, or so Bush-speak would have it, regardless of the fact that loosely translated, assimilation actually means to "make an ass of oneself while trying to emulate others of a different culture."

This is why hubby is also getting anxious for us to shed our Canadian plates. I'm less in a hurry to do so, perhaps because I have a tendency to cut people off in traffic ~ I’m doing my part to fit in is all. But I see his point and raise it ten.

Were it not for the fact that I keep failing the sample test, I wouldn’t be so reluctant. You see, I may have a bachelor’s degree but the only correlation between said higher learning and said drivers test is that my GPA corresponds loosely to the number of questions I can expect to answer correctly. To be fair, I did manage to correctly answer one question regarding the number of days one is permitted to maintain one’s out-of-state license. 30 days.

Not to be confused with the 517 days I have managed to hang onto mine since moving here. Although translate that to metric and you would see: I’ve really not been all that tardy.

Yup that will be my traffic cop argument, if and when. As futile a tactic as the illogic I once heard during my stint as a traffic court reporter: but occifer, I was just going the speed of the guy in front of me.

Distances, schmistances though. And signs, schmigns. I mean don’t ask me, what do I know? I just drive.

Games Without Frontiers
Yeah, it’s all fun and games. Driving tests, insurance, college, scholarships, career, house hunting.

Which is why I love the game of Life. Always have. Ever since the first time I played it at a sleepover at Arden Lupul’s house when I was 8. I remember she had the most amazing home – architecturally-quirky with nooks, crannies, lofts and hordes of board games like the game of Life, which I had never even heard of, which meant it had to be cool.

I remember feeling so empowered by the concept of the game. That you could spin the wheel and be anything you wanted to be and have this great fairy tale life.

My kids have taken to the game with the same enthusiasm.

Hubby, unfortunately, has not. He will do almost anything to avoid playing Life, including doing chores far down his procrastination list. Rather than nag him about these, I have discovered that all I need do is agree to the kid's pleas for a family game night around the coffee table, with the Life board spread eagle and the cars lined in eager anticipation. This alone spurs him into chore mania.

I’ll admit, I take way more risks in the board game version than I do in real life. I like to mix things up now. While I’m still inclined to take the college path before career (in that mama duck way of having my little ducks follow suit), I’m more eclectic in my spousal choices. I usually end up marrying a girl and having two girl babies. There’s something so Thelma and Louisey and Pinky Tuscadaro about this kind of girlie power, pro-choice stance; having all that pink exposed in my rag-top, plastic car, as we all race madcap through life.

And the kids giggle about this because they think it’s fun, too. Until one of us gets a flat tire, lands the best career and salary card, or I lose to the kids ~ whichever comes first.

High, Low, Jolly Go Pepper
So that’s why I’m not going to sweat the freebie work too much.

Instead, I’m going to draw my own arbitrary salary card out of the hat for doing the good work of volunteerism. Hmmm, what should my compensation look like?

A salary of $101,000 seems a fitting sum for the first meeting planning job. After all, having a stake in eradicating global poverty, promoting micro-entrepreneurship and building global sustainability is nothing if not six-figure work.

As to the second volunteer gig of life-skills teaching, I figure that since it’s more part-time and local in scope, I’ll apply an hourly fee of $50.00 to this stint instead. The agency serves as a conduit between the privileged and less privileged in the community by providing the necessary resources and tools for the poor, disabled and newly-immigrant to get a leg up.

It’s hard to fathom that such a dichotomy between rich and poor exists here, and yet it does. I am so firmly squished in the middle class that I have to confess to rarely having been intimately exposed to either extreme before.

Admittedly, the lines are quickly being redrawn as I blog, with new stats suggesting that a six-figure household income is the bare minimum required for new home ownership locally. Good thing then that I have landed two good paying jobs in the same day.

This middle class business is a little like living on the edge though.

There were moments in my childhood that were supreme touch and go. Like when our house burned down and we lived for a time in an abandoned shack with no indoor plumbing. Or the not-so-good-ole days, post-receivership (my mother's diplomatic way of avoiding the word bankruptcy), when my parents faced two failed business ventures and soaring interest rates back in the early 80s.

Or the lean, mean time in my mid-to-late teens, when I sponged off the goodwill of my brother, and my meal plan consisted of popcorn on Wednesday nights and canned corn with butter on Thursday nights (note to self: really must go back to that corn diet ~ I was skinny then).

Again in Pakistan, years later, we were exposed to the outer limits of both poverty and wealth, living as we did in a leased house on scenic Margalla Road, in an affluent Islamabad neighborhood blocks from the Prime Minister’s home, mere steps from Embassy leaders, and downwind from the Pakistan’s own version of royalty, the Mir of Hunza.

Yet in the streets, shoeless, even footless beggars reminded us daily of the true plight of the many, as did the makeshift squalor of the Christian village our cook deigned to call home.

And here we live again, sandwiched in a tired if quaint neighborhood with ample greenery; flanked between pockets of poverty to the south and pockets of extreme wealth to the hilltop east, lakeside west, and uptown north.

Our shopping sensibilities even reflect this. We shop not at Wal-Mart (too sleazy locally), nor at Nordstrom (too expensive), but at Target (just right). Such is not the case, however, for an unnamed gal I know.

Despite barely making ends meet as she relies on child support from her ex and free housing from her mother, this gal opts for the extravagance of a $200.00 white Coach designer handbag. I emphasize white because to my way of thinking, if you’re gonna splurge on a silly little purse while your kids wear flood pants, at least choose one with year-round appeal. Thus blogs the woman who carries a cheap, black plastic LeSportsac purse 1/10th the price of the Coach bag. Egads. Perhaps this might explain my inability to procure paid employment.

Tacky tastes aside, I think us middle class types are uniquely and ideally poised between both rich man and poor man. I liken it to the double dutch jump roper who dances precariously between the two disparate, skipping ropes – one proletariat and one bourgeoisie. Jump into the literal fray of the jump roper sometime and you’ll see it’s a similar viewpoint; that betwixt and between place at the centre of two overlapping circles.

And so it is with this same spirit of blind faith that I shall look forward to these volunteer ventures.

I will be hop, skip and jumping along to work to the beat of high, low, jolly go pepper and to the tune of hi, ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go. And of course, I’ll be sporting my chic alor, new lunch pail, the one I bought at my friendly, neighborhood Targete.

I’m sure I’ll fit right in at the office. That's right. Ass.im.ilate. Said in my best Mr. Rogers 'I like the way you say that' voice.

Somewhere between the billionaire philanthropist who founded the organization and the illegal immigrant cleaning crew who comes in to vacuum after hours.