no, this is not a post about how i almost swallowed a few ounces of toxic mercury from my amalgam filling a couple breakfasts ago, and how i'm convinced that my daughter and i both have serious neurological damage as a result.this is a post about how the brutha has moved to port angeles, washington, which means that there are no more nealis' or kaplans' in montana. i'm sure the big sky state will miss our quirks, but we will not miss the 14 hour drive. because even though my brother and i find it necessary to quibble and quabble when we're even remotely near each other, we do feel the need to see each other often.
so... we spent the past weekend in port angeles and it was lovely. nothing like getting out of your own place so you can forget about your OCD tendencies and realize how much you love your home, even after only being gone for 32 hours. we had a great time, despite the fact that i made the mistake of ordering a prime rib sandwich on some really bad sourdough at a seafood restaurant. the foodie had to rear its pretty little head and make a scene. but just a little one, and it was much later in the day.on saturday we hung out in a mini aquarium and watched my brother almost get his hand bit off by a crab. then we went out to eat, and spent most of the afternoon relaxing in his new living room, antagonizing him with with questions about his personal life. we took adah to the park, cooked a late dinner, and lazed around while anne spent a good deal of time looking up various spider breeds on google images due to the fact that there were several of them hanging from the porch. my dad, the guy who used to be a naturalist, was surprisingly convinced they were deadly.
the next morning, as we went out to the backyard in search of slugs to befriend, we discovered a goldmine: apples! gorgeous yellow plums that were so ripe they were translucent in parts! crimsonly pears! holy crap. out came the luggage to pack the pounds of fruit into. anne had to proclaim the word "enough" many times. she knows what the kitchen becomes when i go picking-crazy and then have to deal with the aftermath.
after the harvesting we headed to olympic national park for a hike. oh my god, it was beautiful in there: an all day twilight. we learned that the key to hiking with little people is the important game of hide and seek. little one counts in front of the tree, sometimes in an interesting order, and you head up the trail to help the hike progress. there was a whole world to hide and seek and breathe new in...
we spent the weekend at the beach, for anne's birthday, where it is so much easier to breathe. we spent lots of time enveloped in sand, and lots of time playing games in the cabin, toddler-style. this involves an attention span of maybe 2 minutes per game, and lots of little playing cards getting all scrambled up and strewn on the floor. anne taught adah how to play chess, scrabble, and checkers (HA!) while i got the lasagna ready, but adah's favorite board game of all was candy land. those cute little candy pictures on the cards almost put her over the edge. i had to squelch the teacher in me when i busted back into the room, ready to teach the kid how to count 2 double purples and so on, when i quickly realized that she had her own special system to abide by: pick up a card, put it down if it didn't have candy on it, pick up another, etc. if she wasn't getting lucky, it was time to simply ransack the deck for the rest of the gumdrops and peppermints. plain colored squares just wouldn't do.
