A bit of background. Will works Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, thus his days off are Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Tuesday, September 2nd, we went to Astoria. Will and I love this town. It's a cute little seaside town and we'd love to live there, but living in the country has sort of spoiled us. We would both rather have a bit of acreage than live right on the bay since it is just over an hour to get there from here. But we still like to go visit. It is the oldest American settlement west of the Rockies. According to a website on Astoria (allow me for a moment to go off on a tangent and explain that Oregonians are WEIRD. Seriously. They have the weirdest pronunciations for towns that I have ever seen - or well, heard. Example: the town Aloha [you know, Hello and Goodbye in Hawaiian?!], yeah - here it's pronounced A-low-a, not A-low-ha. Nothing major, just annoying. Astoria is named after an investor and America's first millionaire (yep, no kidding - but wait it gets better) John Jacob (no NOT Jingleheimerschmidt) Astor. So the name of the town is NOT A-storia, but Ass-toria, from the name Ass-tor (hey - I'm just doing phonetics here, ok - I told you this blog wouldn't always be child friendly, didn't I? No? Well, I should have then.) But really - who says Ass-toria? It just sounds stupid. The town near us is Scappoose, but not Sca-poose, but Scap-poose. It's just hard to get your head around these pronunciations sometimes because they just don't flow off the tongue that easily. I guess part of what also gets to me is that this state is unimaginative when it comes to names anyways - Portland, as in Portland, Maine. it started out as "The Clearing" - yeah - that's brilliant. The name Portland was chosen through a coin toss. Seriously. Here's the story according to Portland.com (I'm in a quoting mood tonight!):
"In 1843, William Overton saw great commercial potential for this land; his only problem was that he lacked the quarter (no seriously - he didn't have a quarter - keep reading) needed to file a land claim. So, he struck a bargain with his partner Asa Lovejoy: for 25 cents, Overton would share his claim to the 640 acre site. Bored with clearing trees and building roads, Overton sold his half of the claim (12 1/2 cents?? what a bargain.) to Francis W. Pettygrove. When it came time to name their new town, Pettygrove and Lovejoy each wanted to name it after his home town. They settled the argument with a coin toss. Pettygrove won, and named it after Portland, Maine; had Lovejoy won, he intended to name it after Boston, Massachusetts."
That's just lame. ANYway, back to Ass-toria. Here's what the website says:
"Within a 20 mile radius, one can see dozens of exciting attractions including Fort Stevens State Park, Fort Astoria, Heritage Center Museum, Flavel House Museum, Uppertown Fire Fighters Museum, Astoria Column, and the Columbia River Maritime Museum, home to one of the nation's finest displays of model ships and nautical artifacts." We've been to the Maritime Museum. It's really cool. Small, but cool.
We drove up to the Column. Here's what it says about the Column:
"Climb the 125 foot high Astoria Column, patterned after Trajan's Column in Rome by architect Electus Ritchfield. The column was dedicated in 1926. Once on top, you will have a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean, Columbia River, and Saddle Mountain and the Clatsop Plain." It has a scrolling history of the town on the outside of the column. It's neat and the view is amazing, but we couldn't climb it because they were doing work on it.
The Column
Siale and Will walking down the hill from the Column
Astoria has also been in several movies, too, specifically Goonies - the house still gets visited all the time, and Kindergarten Cop (It's not a tumor - sorry, movie reference).
Oh, oh, oh - and they have a whorehouse, too! Well, they DID. Now it's a tax office. As Will said, either way you leave money and get screwed.
After the Column, we rode the trolley. Now, about 4 days before this Siale got her finger caught in the hinge side of the car door in a Fred Meyer’s parking lot. I thought I was going to be sick, I was so worried. But she was fine, nothing broken, not even skin. The skin was dented if anything. So that day, before we left for Astoria, she comes in the house to tell me she had an owie. Apparently she found something in the rose bush and went digging for it. She had two holes in her left elbow from thorns and abrasions all across her stomach. So, on went a Barbie band-aid on the elbow. Then, in Astoria we were waiting for the trolley and she ran across the tracks, tripped on her flip flops and fell on the sidewalk, smacking her forehead on the concrete. Later she lost one of those (beloved) flip flops in the river, which really upset her – possibly more than banging her head. (A day or two later I went to the grocery store and just as I got home she had a splinter in her right pinkie and so I had to take that out and put a band-aid on that. Then later we were working in the yard and she got her finger caught in the OTHER side of the car door. Then she fell on our concrete path scraping both her knees and her RIGHT elbow. Band-aids on all of those. Not to mention the extreme constipation.) This poor child had one heck of a week. And she is so amazing and so courageous. Usually a few short minutes after it was over she’d be off and playing again. But I was a nervous wreck that week.
After the trolley, we drove over a bridge and went to Fort Stevens. That was pretty cool. This is what it used to be: "The fort served for 84 years, beginning with the Civil War and closing at the end of World War II. Today, Fort Stevens has grown into a 3,700 acre park offering exploration of history, nature and recreational opportunities." Now it's Oregon's largest campground. We drove all over the fort to all the different areas, like the Plotting Room, which made me think of dark haired men with thin pointed goaties, sitting around a table, sinisterly stroking their goaties and well, plotting. By this point the girls were sleeping, so it was kind of like a date for Will and I and we spent about an hour driving around, giggling and being childish. At one point he wanted to get out and check out a building. It was pitch black inside, so I was too creeped out to see it and so I waited in the car. He went in but then was gone for around five minutes, so I went to go check on him. I walked up just as he was coming out and the devil made me do it. I yelled Boo and the poor man jumped three feet in the air. I felt bad (kind of), but I laughed (a lot), cause I'm mean.
We got a late start on the day, so that was the extent of what we were able to do. But it was successful in getting the girls to sleep. Nothing like fresh sea air and exercise to exhaust kids and make them sleep.
Once we got home we saw that we had a message on the machine from Will's work. One of his coworkers went fishing for tuna. He was offering free whole fish or canned tuna at a cheap rate, but you couldn't just say, "I'll take 5 cans." You had to order the cans by the fish. So the message said that the fish had come in and needed to be picked up ASAP. So Will had to rush and go get it. We had to gut it ourselves. I was all for doing this, because as a mom and a woman living in a fairly countryfied area, I want to raise chickens and goats. Chickens for the meat and eggs, goats for the fun of it. Will and I argued about the chicken thing. He is totally against it. Not only does he have no interest, but since we still live in a neighborhood and not on our own land, he thinks it's discourteous to our neighbors to keep stinky, noisy creatures. But I think it would be cool. So there's a a lot of back and forth on this issue. Our yard is certainly big enough. Well, anyway, the next day, or rather, the next night, we cut it up. We finished at 1:30AM. Man, that’s a labor of love. And let me stress the LABOR part. Neither one of us had ever cut up a fish before, so it was a first. I went online and it took me a while to find the correct information, but man, I LOVE the internet. You can find the most amazing information. You just have to glean it from different sites. First we found that tuna has to be bled right away, which I was worried had not happened to our fish. Turns out they had bled it, thank goodness. Apparently it tastes much better this way. Then we figured out the best way to cut steaks (or “loins") from the fish. One website said that tuna basically has lines on it where you should cut, and it’s true. Follow the advide of your first grade teacher on this one, kids and stay within the lines. Will made a cut and just as he did it I pointed out the line he should have followed and then once he was pulling apart the loin he found out he should have cut there after all. It was amazing. Here’s some pictures of the process. Quick note and disclaimer. Note: We chose the tub in case the fish had not been bled properly and would have to flush it ourselves. Also, our kitchen is TINY and the dang fish was bigger than any of my counters, so we couldn't do it there. Disclaimer, as requested by Will: The tub was thoroughly cleansed and sanitized prior to and after the gutting process. The stench, however, I must admit lingered for about 2 days, with no abatement in fishiness. Every time water hit the bottom of the tub, it reeked.
Once we got home we saw that we had a message on the machine from Will's work. One of his coworkers went fishing for tuna. He was offering free whole fish or canned tuna at a cheap rate, but you couldn't just say, "I'll take 5 cans." You had to order the cans by the fish. So the message said that the fish had come in and needed to be picked up ASAP. So Will had to rush and go get it. We had to gut it ourselves. I was all for doing this, because as a mom and a woman living in a fairly countryfied area, I want to raise chickens and goats. Chickens for the meat and eggs, goats for the fun of it. Will and I argued about the chicken thing. He is totally against it. Not only does he have no interest, but since we still live in a neighborhood and not on our own land, he thinks it's discourteous to our neighbors to keep stinky, noisy creatures. But I think it would be cool. So there's a a lot of back and forth on this issue. Our yard is certainly big enough. Well, anyway, the next day, or rather, the next night, we cut it up. We finished at 1:30AM. Man, that’s a labor of love. And let me stress the LABOR part. Neither one of us had ever cut up a fish before, so it was a first. I went online and it took me a while to find the correct information, but man, I LOVE the internet. You can find the most amazing information. You just have to glean it from different sites. First we found that tuna has to be bled right away, which I was worried had not happened to our fish. Turns out they had bled it, thank goodness. Apparently it tastes much better this way. Then we figured out the best way to cut steaks (or “loins") from the fish. One website said that tuna basically has lines on it where you should cut, and it’s true. Follow the advide of your first grade teacher on this one, kids and stay within the lines. Will made a cut and just as he did it I pointed out the line he should have followed and then once he was pulling apart the loin he found out he should have cut there after all. It was amazing. Here’s some pictures of the process. Quick note and disclaimer. Note: We chose the tub in case the fish had not been bled properly and would have to flush it ourselves. Also, our kitchen is TINY and the dang fish was bigger than any of my counters, so we couldn't do it there. Disclaimer, as requested by Will: The tub was thoroughly cleansed and sanitized prior to and after the gutting process. The stench, however, I must admit lingered for about 2 days, with no abatement in fishiness. Every time water hit the bottom of the tub, it reeked.
I can't afford the Food Saver, which vacuum seals food for the freezer, so I got the Reynolds version for under $20 and the thing works great. I'm pleased. The white thing on the left is the vacuum. You can see in the picture below how it sucked all the air out of the bags.
At one point during the ordeal, I touched Will gently on the arm and said, "No chickens, ok?" Once the main cutting was through on the fish, I was ok, but can you imagine whacking the head off a chicken, then plucking all them feathers and then hacking off the legs - I can. Yuck. No thanks. Changed my mind on THAT one.
The next week, on the 9th, we went to Two Buck Tuesday at the Zoo. Please bear in mind that for the most part I cannot get Siale to stand still for pictures, nor does she care to have her picture taken lately, so most pictures are of her back.
So, I'm not the world's greatest, or even the nicest, mom at times. Because, you see, there are times when I . . . I . . . how do I say this? Well, I laugh at my children's expense. Those perfect moments when I wish I was filming because I just know America's Funniest Home Videos would pay money for it. Like the time a dog came running up to Siale across a big backyard and plowed into her knocking her into the air. (I'm already laughing.) The funny thing was that I remember it slow-mo. She went straight up into the air and then sort (I can't stop laughing) of flew backwards. It was hysterical. She was perfectly fine, but upset, so I had to bite my tongue to stop from laughing while cuddling her. Thank goodness she recovers quickly. In this picture, you can barely make out a round post on the right of the picture. For some asinine reason they made this part of the exhibit on two levels. Siale is on the lower part. Behind her and where I am taking the picture from are three large steps for people to sit on. To the right of the post, the ground is level with where I am taking the picture from. Separating (I'm laughing again) the two levels, is a piece of plexiglass - yes, I know, you know where this is going. In her excitement, Siale ran pell mell directly into the glass. She was fine. But amidst the Oh's and gasps and Ohmygoshes, was an outright bark of laughter from yours truly. Will and I looked at each other and the look was identical on both our faces - "Man, that was funny" and "Is it ok to laugh if it's your own kid?"I love this exhibit, though, because the sea lions come right up to one corner of the glass and then one just sort of floats there, while the other drops really low and then pops up right in front of where Siale is standing. You are maybe three feet from the sea lion's belly.
This is Sophie's response to the excitement.
The zoo has a new baby elephant, Rose, and I wanted to go see it, but there was a pretty long line of people waiting and no guarantee that by the time you got there she would even still be outside, so we decided to pass.This next picture is the basis for another rant. This is a huge pet peeve - people who don't watch their kids.
This washed out little girl on the right was a tyrant. She's playing with a pink tray that Siale had been playing with. I didn't see it happen, so there was nothing I could do about it, but Will said that Siale was burying it, stepped away for a minute to get a shovel a step or two away, and this brat came and took it. Now, I am not exaggerating, because she did the exact same thing to two other kids. Also, the yellow bucket she's holding was one she took from Siale not two minutes before. The boy she is playing with obviously liked her, because he continued to play with her, even after she took a yellow truck from him, right after he picked it up. Her mother was standing just to my right and she ignored all of this girl's behaviour. Later, the girl started flinging sand with her shovel and it was getting all over my feet. I looked over and her mom saw what was going on and then just looked away. One day I will actually confront the parent, but for the time being, I think you also need to stop the behavior right away. So I politely asked her to stop flinging sand, because I didn't want it on me. She didn't stop, so I said, "You need to stop it now, please." Apparently I put enough emphasis on the now that she looked up at me and finally stopped. What is wrong with people? Why can't they watch their kids? The other thing that gets me is here's little Siale, being an angel (and that's not just bias - with the exception of one other girl in the picture below, she was one of the bext behaved there), and walking up to kids to play. She tells them her name and they stare at her like she's loony. Will says it's because the parents go overboard on the "don't talk to strangers," but I'm not so sure. I think it says more about the parents and how we have become such a standoffish society that we just don't talk to people any more and kids pick up on that. Shockingly, I'm an outgoing person and so I think Siale picks up on that and therefore is more likely to go up and talk to other kids. Just my hypothesis. But here is the girl I mentioned above. She, too, was looking for someone to play with so I told Siale about her and suggested they play together and both of them jumped on the chance.
Why you should wake up when your kid does and not try to rest for a few (5) minutes.
Before (what the room normally looks like):
After (while I laid in bed refusing to believe she could possibly be up already and contemplating how I could possibly get some more sleep before beginning the day):
A couple one minute videos of Sophie lying down and sitting. I was aiming to get video of her talking, but once the camera was on her, she was silent. Oh well, they're still cute videos.
As far as her development goes - she scoots backwards, but no crawling yet. Sits up pretty well, but still leans to the side. Still only two teeth on the bottom. We have started her on baby food, which she loves. I am teaching her to be patient so I can eat while I am feeding her, but she's not real big on that concept. But I'm not real big on the alternative - cold food for dinner. And, as I mentioned, she has started talking a bit.
And finally, today. Today we went with Oma, Onkel Roman, Gitante, Jack and Edie to Oaks Park's Oktoberfest. Oaks Park is a, well, frankly the term I would like to use would be highly offensive, so let's just say it would give great pleasure to a carnie. It is like one of those traveling carnivals, but this one never leaves. (Sounds like a Stephen King novel.) (With great thanks to Gitante from the great pictures to follow in this next set.)
Waving to her adoring public from within the Royal Carriage, the masses are treated to a rare glimpse of the elusive Princess Sophana.
Hug me, dammit.
"Beat it, freak" or "Mom, she's touching me."
I will get you with my kung fu powers.
Or I'll just sic my tree rat on you.
Oma's new Siale (I mean doll) house. Granted, Siale is small, but that's one big house.
And finally, end of the day exhaustion. Falling asleep with cookie in hand and juice on the seat in front of you. I had to pull over to eat, I mean, remove the cookie from her hand and put the juice in a cup holder. She's so cute.
And that is how I feel right now after finishing this mega post. Good night, sleep tight, and I love you.
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