The Nose

I cleaned my bathroom today. It was in need. I dropped my sports bra on the floor after I ran last on March 1 (I'm not kidding. It's the pregnancy, cut me some slack.) and it was still there, in the same spot, gathering dust bunnies until I picked it up and put it in the laundry today. Don't judge me. My husband does the toilets.

Anyway. As I rearranged stuff around so I could clean the counter, I noticed, for the first time in a while, my big, fat bottle of expensive perfume. And this brings me to The Nose.

After CPod graduated from . . . the long, long schooling that he attended in Memphis after graduating from BYU, we had a 6 week lag before he received his professional licensure and could do what he was trained to do. (This anonymity thing is hard sometimes!) I had a great job, and we'd been living on my earnings for a long time, so it was no biggie -- but CPod does not do bored. He cannot be idle.

So. He playied around on a few travel websites, all without my knowledge. He formulated a little secret plan, and one day made the announcement: honey, we're going to Paris! Well, flying in and out of Paris. What we did with the remaining three weeks was entirely up to us.

I was absolutely shocked. And ecstatic. But mostly shocked. I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. What better way to burn through the last remnants of his student loan money? The surprise was an advantage -- my boss couldn't say no to three weeks of leave when CPod had already bought the non-refundable tickets and I had had no part in the planning.

We organized our trip, bought Eurail passes ahead of time, and test-filled our backpacks to make sure we weren't taking too much gear. I cut my hair super short so I wouldn't have to worry about it on the trip.

The trip was fantastic. I spent the summer after I graduated from high school travelling through Europe with an orchestra, so we went to all the places I could see again and again and again . . . the Louvre & Orsay museums in Paris, Santa Croce in Florence, the Jungfrau and Trummelbach Falls (I will write about this place again, I promise) in Switzerland. We ate fantastic food (after black truffles, how could anyone ever be the same again?), and explored amazing places. We slept on the train, and we slept in a 700 year old hotel in Venice. In Florence, we had gelato 14 times in 3 days. We made a big loop through France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany and it was all fantastic. All of it.

We have little handmade pottery salt & pepper shakers and a handpainted refrigerator magnet from Orvieto. We have a couple of small watercolors from some artist in Montmartre. We have a mechanically perfect hand-carved peppermill from Germany, and Christmas ornaments from Katya Wohlfahrt's in Rothenburg. CPod saved all his souvenir money so he could buy tools and Jack Wolfskin gear in Germany. And I spent most of mine in Sephora.

Have you been to Sephora? I don't mean the one in your mall, the one that smells like a flower shop on steroids. I mean a huge Sephora. A Sephora with a Nose. At the flagship Sephora on the Champs Elyssees in Paris, the first thing you see when you walk in the door is a small kiosk: nothing fancy, just a wooden circle filled with plain labelled brown bottles and a little man with a really big nose.

The Nose's job is to divine your scent: you tell him what you like, and he finds the fragrance for you. But it's more like magic. All of the bottles look the same, and they are arranged by major ingredient: citrus, floral, marine, musk . . . you get the picture. I thought I might like citrus, knew I didn't want musk, and that was all I said. He looked me over, and said, "Marine." He waved a few little wands under my nose, and voila! "L'Eau d'Issey, by Issey Miyake" was his proclamation, and darned if he wasn't right.

By the way, who is this Issey Miyake character? And where can I get whatever that is you're waving in front of my face, because I have GOT to get me some of that. It's divine: light, airy, clean, cool, and plus, when someone asks me about my perfume, if I say it fast enough, they have no idea what I'm saying. Because if you know me in real life, you are not allowed to share my signature scent.

So there's my memory. I have a newer, bigger bottle of Issey Miyake now. I don't wear it often enough. But every time I put it on, three wonderful weeks of my life flash before my eyes.

Am I famous?

Business first: a brief explanation for my radio silence of the past week. My husband's profession requires him to re-educate himself each year in order to renew his license. This gives us the opportunity to travel a little and write it off as a business expense. Yay!

My wonderful baby brother and his terrifically loving and patient new wife kept our kids for the weekend. (My mom says I may have singlehandedly convinced them to wait many, many years to have children of their own. Really? I hope not!)

We met our best friends from graduate school, who live in Idaho, in Austin, Texas. What a fabulous weekend! I slept. And slept some more. And ate really great food. Without having to feed it to anyone else, or keep anyone else from throwing it at a tablemate, or clean up what spilled on the floor. CPod went to class, and found a six pack of Henry Weinhard's Root Beer at a grocery store. Seriously, that's all he needed.

(I am willing to trade Cheerwine for Henry Weinhards, all of you who live out west. We can't get it out here, and you've probably never had Cheerwine, but it's the drink of the gods. For Christmas about 5 years ago, I actually ordered CPod some Weinhard's root beer from California. The shipping cost more than the root beer. But it's sooooooo good!)

My friend and I shopped and laughed and tried really hard to find our very own sisterhood of the travelling pants, with no luck. She had her youngest child with her, an adorable little 4-month-old angel who looks so much like his oldest brother that I experienced serious deja vu several times while we were together. His big brother, who is now 10, was the first baby I ever loved, and he will forever have a special place in my heart, so it was fun to relive that a little and bond with the smaller version. All in all, it was a wonderfully rejuvenating weekend.

And now . . . on to what this post was supposed to be about in the first place.

Last year, our digital camera died. Or, rather, it became unreliable. It still worked on occasion, but never on the occasions when I needed it. We invested in a newer, smaller, cooler camera and set the old one aside.

Last week, on the twins' birthday, I ran across the old camera. Since I hadn't thought about it in months, I gave it to G-Dog and ConMan. It was their favorite birthday present. (Of course it was. Because I didn't have to pay for it.)

Little did I know what I was getting myself into. Suddenly, I have a great deal of sympathy for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, because everywhere I go, I am followed by a gaggle of loud, intrusive, demanding photographers. The only things they haven't captured are those that I generally (try to) do by myself in the bathroom. Or any nudity (mine or theirs). But give them time. I'm sure the thought will occur to them eventually.

My little personal papparazzi have documented me making dinner, dusting the living room, sitting on the couch with my kids, doing laundry, playing games, and bludging. They have taken pictures of our carpet and close-up views of our couch and chair upholstery; they have zoomed in on our chef at the Japanese steakhouse we went to on their birthday; they have blinded each other with the flash and gotten up close and personal with nose hair; and they have taken many, many, many pictures of the television. Because those shows NEED to be documented for posterity.

The following is a very select sampling of the photographic prowess of my progeny. Consider yourselves the VIPs invited to the exhibition preview, because I'm certain that high-end galleries and snooty art critics are in our future. A warning: there are some very unattractive pictures of me in this lot. VERY. But I am that willing to sacrifice my dignity so you, dear readers, can have a laugh. Enjoy.

We'll start with a series I like to call Polyptych of Mommy Booty:

Whatever

Finger Toes
(I know these toes belong to G-Dog. Unlike CPod and G-Dog, MayDay, ConMan and I all have toes like hobbits, not fingers.)

Restaurant of Blinding Lights

WikiSticks on Blankie

Piggy Shine

Brother Behind Glass

She Moves Too Fast

Transformer Family Portrait
(L-R: Optimus Prime, Jazz, BumbleBee)

Wheelbarrow in Mulch
(The genius of this photo is that somehow, the perspective is way off. I mean, that wheelbarrow is only 8 feet away, but it looks like it's two stories down. I'm still not sure how they did it.)

Ten Things I Learned at Walt Disney World

Long post alert. We've got lots of ground to cover here, people!

You can't beat flowers like this in January.

Me and cutie ConMan after day two at the Magic Kingdom.

The Mickey Family Portrait.

1. Next time, I'll prepare for the trip by learning how to say "excuse me" in 17 languages. I'm serious. I would bet that English-speaking Americans were in the extreme minority while we were there. If I learn how to say "excuse me" in 17 languages, I won't feel so bad about running over people's toes with my large, conspicuous, where-did-you-think-I-was going-with-this-thing double stroller.

2. You don't have to be American to look like a redneck. Just when I thought I had someone pegged as a good old boy, out they'd come with a "Cheerio, old chap" and I would scratch my head. That's what I get for stereotyping.

3. You should only wear clothing printed with phrases in languages you know. You wouldn't believe the number of t-shirts I saw printed with nonsensical English. For example, "It Maximum Authoritized". I thought about this for a long time trying to make sense of it. But it doesn't make sense. And the cool looping script over a really awesome graphic will never make it make sense. I don't even think "authoritized" is a word. So . . . all of you out there with the Chinese character for "harmony" tattooed on your (fill in the blank with some embarassing body part) . . . exactly how sure are you that it doesn't mean "dog-faced" or "idiot"?

4. If vanity is a reason to not live somewhere, Florida has just been stricken from my list. Because if we lived in Florida, I would be faced with the prospect of never ever again having a good hair day, and I'm just not sure I could live with that.

5. Something nefarious has happened to Daisy Duck. She is absolutely absent from the Magic Kingdom. She is not in either parade, she is not on the merchandise, and she is not mentioned elsewhere in the park. For a sassy, speak-your-mind kind of girl like me, this absence is disturbingly conspicuous! Are they trying to put down the one who says it like it is? The one who tells her boyfriend what to do? Was there some Disney patron focus group that reflected unfavorably on the notorious duckette? I will get to the bottom of this!

6. The Haunted Mansion ride is not appropriate for toddlers. The last time I rode The Haunted Mansion, I was 9. And it was great fun -- harmless ghosts, gimmicky special effects that were easy to see through, and a lot of laughs. I expected it to be exactly the same. Turns out, Disney actually updates their rides every once in a while, and The Haunted Mansion is waaaaaaaay scarier than it was (ahem) 23 years ago. Don't worry, though -- CPod told the boys we were in a Scooby Doo movie and they were cool with it.

7. I could live on French toast loaf (from the Main Street Bakery) and Dole pineapple whip (from the little ice cream stand in AdventureLand). Except that only covers two of my four major food groups (fruit, bread, cheese, chocolate). Guess I'll have to supplement with turtle cheesecake.

8. DisneyWorld is like the Vatican. They own every part of their compound. They maintain their own roads, they have their own police (I actually saw a car with lights on top and a siren blaring down the road), and Mickey is the pope. Disney OWNS the southwest part of Orlando. You can't fly a plane over it, you have to show ID all over the place, they recruit employees from all over the world, and they have more money than . . . well, probably the Vatican. I rest my case.

9. My kids will eat anything shaped like Mickey Mouse, or remotely related to any Disney character. They'll eat food from a Mickey-shaped plate, drink water from a Mickey-emblazoned cup, and eat carrots from a Mickey Mouse bowl. They will eat Mickey-shaped chicken nuggets and mouse head noodles in mac & cheese. I tell you, they're geniuses of catering to children down there. I should have taken notes.

10. Any place where even the bad guys are willing to dress up and walk in the parade at the end of the day has to be the happiest place on earth. And that attitude seems to be pervasive while you're in the Magic Kingdom. People are happy to be there. Kids are wide-eyed and enthralled by all they experience. And in general, people are helpful and pleasant.G-Dog actually said, "Mommy, I want to stay here forever." And no one steals your stuff. We hucked our stroller all over that park, and it was always exactly where we left it, with all of our gear still inside, after every ride. Where else does that happen?!?

And also, FastPasses rock. ROCK!

We lost ConMan for about 5 minutes. CPod took the boys one direction while I went the other to pick up our stroller. ConMan saw someone he thought was me and ran after her, and before CPod realized what was happening, he was gone. I found him standing in front of Mickey's house, holding hands with the Disney employee in charge there. He was not crying, but I could tell he had been . . . and some strange lady who looked like me had consoled him and taken him to a safe place. We are lucky, I know . . .what a relief! The happiest place on earth, indeed.

You can stop reading now if you don't want to see more pictures.

Yes, I know, my child is the same color as the cement. CPod prefers to describe his and our kids' paleness as "fair and delightsome". I think maybe MayDay is the color of fine marble, and Michelangelo would have coveted such lovely skin. MommyJ's Sam calls MayDay "Mayonnaise". Yeah. Nice.

(I must interject a side note here, because this is the only pool picture in the bunch. Since we stayed in a house with a pool, and I didn't want to shave my bikini line every day, I waxed right before we left on the trip. Next time, I'll get an epidural first. I mean, my Brazilian sister-in-law said it wouldn't hurt a bit! Maybe she'll be able to deliver her babies naturally should she have the opportunity to in the future, but I'm a pain wus. Who loves epidurals.)

There are lots of free or cheap things to do at the Disney resorts. The boys rode ponies at Fort Wilderness. (G-Dog is with CPod's dad.)


G-Dog spent a lot of time entertaining his cousin, SpecialK. We were worried he would love her a little too hard, but it turns out, he's one of her favorite people.


Dinner at Chef Mickey's. I thought it was way overpriced, but the kids LOVED it.


G-Dog unofficially adopted UncleC, who was such a good sport that this is how he saw the Magic Kingdom: with a parasitic organism attached to his shoulders.


ConMan volunteered to drive the boat on the Jungle Cruise. Our cute little guide let him drive for most of the trip, and then gave him a little Mickey Boat Pilot's license after we finished. I think I'm going to have to get it laminated.


3-D glasses for Mickey's Philharmagic. Too cute. My kids love glasses of all kinds, and wear sunglasses regularly. Wonder where they got that?!?

Where they really belong.

At the end of the day, everyone fell asleep, even in all the noise of the great exodus that occurs after the fireworks. Can you tell CPod and I both wish we were the ones sleeping?

Mickey Talk

For your reading pleasure, here are just a few of the random conversations we've had with our kids this week.

I. Where are you from again, son?

Mickey's Philharmagic is a 3D show in FantasyLand. My kids loved it, especially ConMan. He has this strange accent that sometimes sounds like he's from Long Island and at others, like he's waaaaay more southern that either of his parents. We'll just call him the dialectic chameleon.

So, we're sitting in the theater watching this little 3D movie, which is chock-a-block with Disney characters from Disney movies of every Disney decade. Suddenly, Peter Pan appears on screen and my little linguistic wonder says, "Look, Mommy! It's Pee-tuh!" in perfect mimicry of the uber-British dialect prevalent in the original film. So funny.

II. Hey Mickey

We resort-hopped today, utilizing everything free we could find, and one of the best free things at Disney is the African savanna that extends from the guest rooms at the Animal Kingdom Resort. To get in, you have to show a photo ID to a guard who wears a Disney uniform.

G-Dog: Mommy, is that guy a Mickey policeman?

Me: Yep. He's a Mickey policeman.

G-Dog: Does he take Mickey bad guys to Mickey jail?

Oh, yes, son. In a world where everything from ice cream sandwiches to road signs are shaped like that ubiquitous mouse head, it only makes sense that the jail has mouse ears, too.

A Paean to the Minivan

For Christmas, we got a car title. (Wo-hoo! No more car payments for us.) And 600 miles before the warranty expired, a scary noise that only happened at slow speeds, whilst turning. So early this morning, CPod took our Honda Odyssey in to the dealership to have them check it out.

I was surprised to find that all three of our car seats actually will fit in the Date Car, also known as the Honda Accord That I Wish I Could Still Drive All the Time. When MayDay was born, the big boys were still in little seats that are in reality much bigger than the big boy seats they use now, and it was absolutely impossible to fit our entire family in one vehicle all together. Hence the minivan.

You may scoff. I know I did. I swore I would never be one of "those" moms. Had I known then what I know now, I would have hopped on the minivan bandwagon as soon as I saw the glimmer in CPod's eye. (It's completely beside the point that said glimmer happened in a test tube . . . but I digress. I'll cover all that in a future post.)

We decided, on the spur of the moment, to drive down to SC so that CPod could go to the gun club with his dad and brothers. We women-folk decided it might be fun to catch a movie with all the kiddies. And so we headed down the mountain to meet up with the rest of CPod's family.

Usually, these days, when I'm in the Date Car, I'm alone, on the way to a rehearsal, just me and Bono singing away. Or on an actual date with CPod. (Sometimes Bono comes along then, too.)

And so, today, in the car with three children who haven't had a normal bedtime in well over a week, and a two-year-old who is used to a three-hour nap every day but hasn't had a decent one in three days, I came to understand what most of you have known now for years: I LOVE MY MINIVAN.

For two reasons. First, my kids can't touch each other in the minivan. They also can't reach other with Slinkys. Or a play guitar. Or a cheeseburger.

Second, I can't hear them in the minivan. We have the seats arranged so MayDay sits right behind the driver and the big boys sit in opposite corners of the very back seat. The acoustics aren't so great in the minivan, especially on the highway.

I used to complain about this. In fact, it was one of the only things I disliked about our car. But no more.

I think I might write a letter to Honda telling them how glad I am that they are smarter than me. And how grateful I am that their years of experience in car manufacturing has created a vehicle so evolutionarily advanced that it perceived my need for quiet in the front long before I realized the horrible alternative.

Happily, the scary noise the Odyssey was making was a minor issue covered by the warranty. It was fixed by the time we came back up the mountain.

And now, I will count my blessings every time I get in the minivan and only vaguely hear some noise that may or may not be a distress signal emanating mysteriously from the back seat.