Category Archives: Family

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I love you, Robot Johnny

I’m a Blogsliner. Plain and simple. I’m not as savvy with the computer as people seem to think so as RSS feeds go I pick the nice cotton candy way to view my favorite sites. A couple of my favorites that I frequent are:
-the obvious Dooce, who I think is brilliantly funny and sometimes I think is just me in some parallel universe
–The Sneeze who wins me over with his occasional experimental eating entries
-and finally Robot Johnny who participates in Illustration Friday, but also seems clever and cute and I think I want to meet him.

Today Robot Johnny shared something wonderful with me. Well, okay he shared it with the Internet, but I felt like he was speaking to me. He has finally found something he’s been searching years for and I had even rooted him on from my Pacific Northwest perch hoping he would be successful in finding his Holy Grail. Library Thing [dot] com.

My sister, Maddy, used to have all her books catalogued in a steno pad and she made me a library card so I could check books out from her. I may have already referenced this in an old blog entry, but even then I racked up late fees. A nickel here and there sure adds up when you’re 8 years old.

So Mad, check out this site. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if we had this back then? I know it was only 1984 and we didn’t even have a computer yet (or maybe we already had our IBM PCjr and were programming simple games with 10 think of a color 20 type color 30 if red go to 40… What is that, BASIC?) but wouldn’t Library Thing have been a much easier way to track your little sister’s overdue items?

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Bright Copper Kettles

As a little girl my dad was away on cruise a lot (for you non-military brats, this means he was off on the USS Enterprise for months on end, flying his A-6 on and off the ship, cruising around some ocean somewhere, with ports in exotic lands from which he would send me postcards) so up until I was 7 years old I was used to my mom putting me to bed and bringing me water every time I yelled for her (which was usually at least three times a night). When my dad would be home for a stint here and there it was always a bit disconcerting to call for water and have him bring me a glass. Here was this man I had yet to form a relationship with coming into my dark room telling me I should really be asleep. Yes Sir, Daddy.

Luckily, it turned out my dad was not the drill sergeant father I feared him to be and over time I started to look forward to him putting me to bed. At a certain point he stopped having to go away on the ship and we got to have him home all the time. Occasionally when he would put me to bed he would come in and tuck the sheets in tight around me and tell me, “Close your eyes and pretend your camping in a forest somewhere and you can hear the sounds of nature all around you and it’s beginning to rain. Listen to the rain pattering on the tops of the trees and the tent and you are all snug and warm in your sleeping bag.” I loved this. The sound of rain was always something I liked or maybe this is what started that love for rain. Sometimes he would describe us as being in the back of a truck with a canopy covering us and the rain sounding tin-like on the roof. He didn’t do this every night, but I can even remember a couple times in high school when he came in to make sure I was going to bed and would reenact this tucking in routine.

To this day, I love the sound of rain. Currently I’m working at a clinic where there is a giant skylight over the nursing station. And when I say skylight I really mean the entire ceiling is like the pyramids at the Louvre. It’s been raining here in Spokane and around 3pm each day I sit in one of the Nurse’s chairs and close my eyes as the rain beats down above us. There are moments you can’t hear each other speak because it is so loud. And I think it might be the most peaceful thing in my life right now.

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With this kitchen, I thee wed.

Here I am in Spokane and my brand new house sits empty. I have boxes in the garage I didn’t bother to unpack, but I did set up my bed so if I decide to come home some weekend I’ll have a place to crash. My lovely next door neighbors, Dave and John, let the couch guys in so at least I have a couch, but really it’s just empty.

If it weren’t for my longing to live in my house, I actually like being in Spokane. My mom’s whole family is here and she’s the oldest of eight so you can just imagine the Catholicism at work here. This weekend I visited many relatives and helped move some of my grandparents stuff into their new place, but the best part of the whole weekend was playing with my cousin Denie’s two kids. Max and Ella are so clever and sweet. I wanted to pack them up and take them home. People have pointed out that the ticking of my clock is interrupting their conversations. Sorry. Never thought it would happen.

Until (if?) I follow the path of marriage and family, I have this house. People keep asking me if I feel any differently owning a house. What I realized is that I feel like I just married Seattle. It’s as if Seattle proposed to me a few years back and I thought long and hard about it, dated a few other cities, had a couple one night stands with some little towns, and flirted with a bunch of other states, until finally I said, “Alright Seattle, I think I do love you, let’s do it. Let’s get married.”

The truth is it’s all about the kitchen. When I was dating this guy a couple years ago, we used to joke that the only way he could get me to marry him was to build a beautiful master suite above his house. That sounds so materialistic of me, but well, I don’t know how to defend myself except that I knew it was a safe bet he wasn’t going to do that. My point is that Seattle wooed me with this beautiful kitchen and I was sunk. So here it is and here I am and all is good. Seattle and I shall have many a dinner party together in our kitchen of love.

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The Women Who Move Me: Installment #1

Many of you have known me long enough to know the ladies that have come in and out of my life. And when I say ladies, of course I mean…my cars.

Installment #1

1980 WHITE VOLVO STATION WAGON
“White Lightning” aka “Chewy”

1980 White Volvo Wagon 240 DL (not mine, but just like it)

My sister Marie inherited the family Volvo Station Wagon when she got her license and I wanted that car so badly. When she went away to Florence, Italy for a year of school, I was a junior in high school and her car needed to go somewhere. I faintly remember my mom saying something like, “Just because Marie is going to Italy for a year, I don’t want you to think you’ll be able to do something like that when you are in college, but what you DO get is to drive the Volvo while she’s gone.” Now I realize that Marie actually paid for Italy (at least the getting over there and the day-to-day living aspects; my parents probably still paid tuition) but at the time I thought the Volvo was my consolation prize.

I loved my Volvo. I mean, I loved this car more than any other car I’ve ever had.

  • She was almost as old as I was
  • She had electrical problems so I sometimes had to start her under the hood, but this also meant that all the lights on the dashboard would blink at me from time to time, which I told people was just her way of talking to me like Kit on Knight Rider.
  • She had a nasty dark blue leather-simulated but more plastic-like interior that would crack in the sun so my dad had sewn a dashboard cover out of denim and would stain it blue every few months after it faded from the light
  • She had these grey fur seat covers which helped keep your legs from sticking to the seats on hot sweaty days (this was California, people), but my dad had spilled coffee on the passenger side so he had cut the seat part off and all that was left was a fur cover for the top part of the seat
  • Her brakes would make this sound every time I pushed them that was reminiscent of Chewbacca from Star Wars, so we nicknamed her Chewy and I kept a Chewbacca Pez Dispenser on the Dashboard
  • She had the best turning radius I’ve EVER encountered and I’ve driven over 50 different types of cars. When taking sharp last minute “teenager-like” turns, the blue denim dashboard cover would invariably slide right off into the passengers lap or almost out my window.
  • She didn’t have any cup holders so my friends and I went through a series of poorly designed accessories meant to hold a beverage, but usually just snapped off and spilled all over. My favorite one being the one that hooks into your door in the space where the window goes up and down. Every time you rolled the window up, the holder would pop out and Pepsi would go all over your lap. Ultimately, my thighs were the best form of cup holder I had, or if I took out the Kleenex box, that was most likely still soaked in old Pepsi, from between the seats, I could prop my cup between my seat and the emergency brake (which never got used).
  • You could fit an entire twin bed, box spring and mattress, in the back with the seats down. The seats laid flat and the door shut easily. You will never find a better car for carting stuff around. A true wagon.
  • She had this armrest that came down in the middle of the back seat, which we called “the hump.” When I was a little girl, I always wanted to sit on “the hump” so I could see out. At some point, they stopped letting me because I got too big. And at another point, we got a van because the back seat was too small for three sisters who hated to share space, yet in high school we somehow managed to fit 5-10 people in there without any complaints or problems.

Eventually my sister came back from Florence and reclaimed Chewy. Luckily, I hadn’t seen the last of her. She would resurface in my life again and I would have one last hurrah before putting her to sleep.

Stay tuned for Installment #2 in “The Women Who Move Me.”

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Waxing Nostalgic

I was playing around with Picasa as Kris recommended because my pictures were huge when I sent them to Flickr. Then because they used up 48% of my allotment I retracted them without realized the allotment was referring to bandwidth, not space. So I removed the pics without realizing that putting them back there was going to take more bandwidth. I’m an idiot. I told Kris and he tried not to laugh. His exact instant message response was “Jesus.” I concurred.

So, back to my point. He recommended I get better acquainted with Picasa (which I had installed on my laptop months ago and never done much with). When I browsed through my pics to see if there was anything I felt like shrinking, I found my trip to Hawaii with my family. Strange. The trip was sort of a disaster. Family fights, hard rain, lots of visits to the military base which caused more fights. But let’s get something straight here; I was not one of the people fighting. I just drank my beer, or my strawberry volcano, or my mailbu bay breeze and read my book.

My point is that I rather enjoyed the trip since I blocked out the inane fights and was pleasantly surprised that the island which initially I had no desire to ever visit turned out to be breathtaking. Not to mention that I love crazy weather. I get sick of Seattle drizzle and yearn for sudden drowning rain storms.

So I stumbled upon this picture and got all choked up. It was a miserable day. One sister had already left for the mainland. We had eaten McDonald’s for lunch (ick)! But I felt like it was old days when my parents would take us to some historical site and my dad would tell me stories about the past and paint a vivid picture of what happened. He really should have been a history teacher. I would have fared much better in school.

The other thing this picture reminded me of was a student of mine with the last name Gaylard. She always referred to herself as “HappyFat” instead. I liked that. And looking at my dad and me in this picture the first thing that popped in my head was HappyFat. And I giggled.

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Katie and her Groundhog climb back in

As some of you may have surmised, my birthday was Monday, Groundhog’s Day. On Sunday night, I had a great dinner at St. Cloud in Madrona with Scott, Tonja, Piet, and my sisters. Despite a few sisterly tiffs, it went fairly well and the waiter even sang Happy Birthday to me in a shockingly amazing voice. Thanks Aaron the waiter!

On Monday, my actual birthday, I was stuck in a new employee orientation all day in Tukwila. But my day was brightened by numerous text messages and voice mails wishing me a happy birthday. As well as a cute pic message from Johnny to my phone. Thank you everyone who remembered. I was amazed by the outpouring of kind thoughts and it made my day a little better. Unfortunately I had an exam and project due on Tuesday so after my work day I went into the office until 10:30pm and worked on my project.

Another thing, which seems to happen often on my birthday, is that I was sick. Still am a bit. I think I got my bad cold from Tonja because I didn’t give her much sympathy when she said she was sick and I even said, “I never get sick, let’s go hang out.” So there I was on my birthday feeling crappy and working all day. Then on Tuesday I took my exam and felt sicker, and then came Wednesday when, after popping some vitamins before training, I found myself in the bathroom hovering over the toilet with dry heaves. Needless to say, my teacher sent me home and, much like my brother the groundhog, I frowned at the shadow of my birthday and climbed back into bed.

The only thing that made it better (besides everyone’s birthday messages) was the fact that accompanying a great gift from my mom of a gift certificate for a cooking class, she also sent me my teddy bear, LizBear, who I had left in Oak Harbor. So there I was, curled up in bed with LizBear, and I was glad to have her back. 28 years together and sometimes I think she’s holding up better than I am.

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The Goose is getting fat…

Oak Harbor, WA

Well, no. Actually, I’m getting fat. Living with my parents temporarily while I help them move has not turned into the most conducive environment to get healthy. We are constantly trying to get rid of food in the fridge and cupboards so I am encouraged to eat. I make at least two if not three giant cappuccinos a day and even though I am constantly packing boxes, the manual labor is not exercise at all.

But Christmas has come and gone and it wasn’t so bad. My sisters came up for about a day and a half and then packing resumed. I can think of two favorite Christmas moments this year. First my dad claimed he didn’t want to eat any more sweets or junk and then proceeded to dive into the Christmas goodies on the counter. I snatched them away with a scolding, “If you don’t want to eat junk, then just don’t! You don’t see me eating any of this crap.” Then after he walked away I noticed a chocolate coated coconut cookie like thing, snatched it from the candy dish, then hid myself in the living room to eat it. Within seconds my dad walked by, looked at me, and said, “You’re horrible. That’s rich, Katie.” I couldn’t stop laughing. I think I laughed for a good three minutes while my dad went upstairs to squeel on me to my mom. Good times, good times.

Second great memory? When I was in Europe I grabbed four more Playboys for my collection. A Dutch, German, Czech, and British issue to add to my existing Polish issue and the standard American issues. So what does this have to do with Christmas? Late Christmas day, after my parents went to bed, my sisters and I were watching TV and arguing over the clicker, when I realized they were going through my Playboys. The funny thing is that our usual Christmas fights had been at an all time low, until this. My two older sisters began bickering over whose turn it was to see which Playboy issue. If only I had a video camera. Ah, those precious Christmas moments.

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I’m Taking a Poll

Waikiki, HI

I want everyone to reply in my comments to the following question.

How many of you take vacations with your entire family? (I’m speaking of family in the terms of parents and grown siblings)

If you do take vacations together, what would say is the percentage of fighting that goes on versus pleasant conversation and time spent together?

Lastly, if you don’t ever take trips together then answer the second question pertaining to holidays. I want to know how many people go back to their parents’ house for the holidays and what that is like.

If you are married then explain how things may have changed since you got married.

I’m just curious where my family stands next to the rest of the average American families.

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Spider Update

There’s this habit in our family to put off pressing responsibilities or work by filling our time with cleaning or organizing. We comvince ourselves that the messy house or the filled e-mail inbox is due for a cleaning and that is a justified priority. So I was not surprised when I came home the other night to my sister’s apartment and the place smelled of amonia and reeked of procrastination.

Lo and behold, not only was the kitchen floor spotless, but the infamous trapped spider was gone. Apparently, it had built itself a web and made itself at home inside the glass so when my sister finally had the guts to pick up the glass, the spider wouldn’t leave. She place the glass right side up outside and we kept checking on him. We couldn’t decide if he were starving or trapped or just plain resting.

Later that night, something hit my ankle as I was washing dishes and I looked down only to find that, no not another spider, but a bee was crawling around by my foot. Now I am slightly less scared of bees so I calmly put a glass over it. The only difference here is that I was calm.

Never fear. After all the guilt I felt over the spider, it only took about five minutes for me to find a piece of card stock to slip under the glass and carry the bee outside. After releasing it I had an afterthought that maybe I should have thrown it into the glass with the spider. I’m pretty sure the spider needs food and water (he’s pretty dry, but not dead) so what do you think? Would the bee have won or would the spider have devoured her?

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Balance or Karma?

So my Labor Day weekend would have been wonderful since I got to see my good friend Johnny (read his account of our glorious fun) but instead the gods decided to once again balance out my good fortune with some bad. My computer crashed.

I spent all day yesterday trying to troubleshoot the error messages. You know the ones. A BSoD (blue screen of death) with numbers like 0x000000C2 or 0x000000A5 and of course everything I read doesn’t really help. Every time I thought I had fixed the problem there seemed to be a new error message or number. I won’t bother you with the details, but after shedding some tears in a Best Buy yesterday because they refused to let me exchange the wrong memory card (which they finally did exchange by the way, just to try and get this crazy woman…namely me…to stop crying) and then being on the phone all day today with Dell, I finally got to the point where they said it was the motherboard. Then after another hour of waiting to be connected to the guy who was supposed to set up a time to come out and change my motherboard, I finally talked to Kurt.

Kurt has renewed my faith in Dell. Before I talked to him I had decided (and will actually probably stick to this) that I will never let another friend buy Dell. Horrible tech support. Non-communicative. I could really go into it, but I won’t. But Kurt, wonderful, beautiful Kurt, listened to me. Really listened to me. He asked the right questions, he explained why he was having me try a few more things, he described what he was looking for, and within 15 minutes he figured out it was the original memory card that was bad. Not the ones I had been buying. Now my computer works again and they are sending me a free memory card. Thank god.

So I ask again, was this to balance out the spectacular days I had on Thursday and Friday? I was on such a high and then this happened and I haven’t cried so much in one day for a very long time. (There was more to cry over than just my computer, but I’m sure I would have been more apt to yell instead of cry if it were just that.)

But as I’m writing this I’m looking over into my sister’s kitchen (my sister who’s couch I’m sleeping on) and I see this glass on the floor in the corner. A glass that has been there for about three weeks or more. Underneath this glass that is turned upside down, is a spider. A big scary spider that my butch lesbian ex-army combat helicopter pilot sister was too scared to deal with. And so am I. We are so pathetically afraid of spiders that we have trapped this poor thing for almost a month and neither of us want to acknowledge it’s still there. So maybe it’s karma. Maybe my lack of compassion for this spider is what led to my computer crashing. Hmmm… Our mom was here last night and she always took care of spiders for us when we were little (never forgetting to include a “I can’t believe you girls are such wimps” kind of mumble under her breath) so we asked her if she would take care of it since she was here. She just looked at us like we had to be kidding.

Alas, the spider is still here and my mother won’t take care of it, probably as some statement about us being adults now or something. Do you think I could ask the Dell Tech Support guy to take care of it? I’m starting to feel guilty.