First, the bun is back!

At my last haircut, I fell prey to the “I’ve had the same hair for three years am I looking dated?” fear and replaced my standard “just a trim” with “how about we take off six inches or so?”

(Fortunately, even *I* am not dumb enough to convince myself that bangs will transform my look from “introverted tech writer” to “edgy Portlander in the creative class.”)

The cut was fine, but I suddenly realized how dependent I was on the bun – not just as a quick solution to “I didn’t feel like washing my hair. Again.”, but also because it makes me feel profesh.

Yay to quick-growing locks because the bun is back in business! Hope you like it, cuz I learned my lesson and won’t change my hair for at least another four years.

Second, my new passport just arrived and glory be, the latest version of the Canadian passport requires only one signature:

(Yes, I just posted my scary-looking passport photo on the interwebs. Self-confidence for daaaaaays over here!)

The old-style passport used to include the signature you used on your application and then you re-signed it when you received your actual passport so (theoretically and as proof you’re the same person) they matched.

Not a problem for most people, but for some reason, I cannot master the Adulting 101 requirement of a consistent signature.

(I comfort myself by saying Shakespeare’s signature was never the same twice either. At least I can spell it right every time.)

You only get one chance to get it right. If you mess up, you’re stuck with mismatched signatures for five years.

Think nobody compares them? Tell that to the eagle-eyed airport security lady who said flatly, “your signatures don’t match.”

(Cue frantic sweaty babbling about how I always have trouble and the pen slipped and I’d been signing so many things that day and all the prior ones were right and would you like to see my driver’s license and credit cards and see how they’re all kind of in the same ballpark?)

I was EXTRA worried this time because I sprang for the 10-year one. That’s a LONG time to experience signature anxiety every time you cross borders.

Now as long as they don’t ask me to replicate it in real-time, I’m set! And I have ten years to try to figure out how to do it right!

…but it seems to me that this not the wisest choice of class project for 8th grade wood shop:

Action shot:

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What it feels like when I see him:

We went to The South!

Oh my. Can confirm, DEFINITELY armed.

We made some besties back in our Minneapolis days and they up and moved to Memphis on us. They currently have four babies aged five and under (Oh. My. Lanta!) and we’d only met Babies #1 and #2, so when The Husband had a work trip to Nashville, the kids and I were more than happy to meet him there and then pile in the car to descend upon our friends.

(Oh Emmanuel peeps – I know you are SO jealous!)

Priority number one was good old fashioned “hanging out” and we got to do that in spades.

And there was baby holding. So much baby holding!

We also got to see Memphis at its finest. First, the National Civil Rights Museum. It was truly amazing and humbling and I cried and there were Freedom Buses and lunch counters and emancipation and THE hotel balcony.

(And I left feeling inspired and self-congratulatory and “phew so glad that’s in the past” and then I turned on the news this week and oh my there is still so much to do….)

We ate the best fried chicken in Memphis – Gus’s!

And then we left the kiddos behind and did some grownup hanging out on Beale Street.

Followed by more grownup (plus one nursing baby) time at a beer garden on a beautiful night with great music.

Did I mention the baby holding?

There was also pretty much the craziest destination I’ve ever visited. Imagine if The Luxor hotel in Vegas and Cabela’s had a baby:

That baby would be the “Bass Pro Shops” in Memphis. (Plus bonus Ducks Unlimited heritage centre.)

Oh. My.

Hmm, which gun should I buy?

There’s even an observatory at the top (complete with restaurant, natch).

See that little island just to the right of The Girl? That’s Mud Island, and that’s where we finished up our weekend jaunt with some wading in a scale model of the Mississippi (plus just getting dresses and shorts wet for the under-five set).

We packed a lot in, but the bestest of all was just catching up and watching our kids delight in each other just like the good old days. Thanks, Memphis BFFs for your Southern hospitality! And your babies. Always your babies.

So I bet y’all think that Chez PM is a never-ending carousel of cool concerts and surfing and lazy brunches and hikes and indie movies and [insert superfun thing here]. Well, those things do happen. But we also experience this little thing called reality. And, in the interest of making sure that this little corner of the interwebs isn’t merely my highlight reel – guess what I did this last weekend?

Rose City Comic Con?

Nope. It looked cool, though.

Start your blacksmithing apprenticeship?

Nope. The Girl did, though.

Go to the church fall kick-off and start the fun Sunday School classes and meet the new youth pastor and enjoy potluck and chatting and watching The Boy get a pie in the face during the games?

Nope. That would be the entire family but me.

Well, what on earth did you do then?

This.

Oh yes, I got to have dental surgery!

OMG. There must be a backstory to this…

Indeed. It actually all started three years ago. In Trafalgar Square in London of all places.

(Actually it probably started a bit earlier than that. I do love my parents somethin’ good, but alas, they gave me some fairly crappy teeth. Nine fillings by age nine, yo!)

So one of said fillings had been turned into a crown some years back and then in London we hit a candy shop (you can see The Girl with her lollipop) and I bought toffee (because I WAS IN LONDON! IT’S A REQUIREMENT!) and we were walking and touristing and suddenly I felt a weird pop and holy guacamole there was a TOOTH stuck in my toffee. (Well, more accurately, a crown.)

Inwardly freaking out (OMG I AM VERY FAR FROM HOME AND IT’S ONLY THE BEGINNING OF OUR VACATION AND IS THERE A DENTIST BESIDE THE BRITISH LIBRARY) but outwardly very calm (because Mom), I casually took said crown and popped it back on.

And there it stayed, thank goodness! And we made it through the vacation without having to hit up the Canadian embassy (seen in the background – don’t you love that it’s right there?) for a dentist.

(Aside: Do you think you need to go through the embassy for a dentist abroad? I feel like I would want to – maybe there’s a Commonwealth discount!)

Anywho, at my post-vacation crown re-cementing there were warnings about “not a whole lotta tooth left underneath” (hola mom and dad!) and that this was probably a stop-gap and blah blah “next step is surgery” blah blah “not sure if this will work….”

In retrospect, probably amazing that it was fine for two and half years after all that. But alas, the reckoning came and the intermittent pain I’ve been trying to ignore since Christmas became un-ignorable and I found myself in that blasted chair yet again.

Shout out to “happy pills” and laughing gas – I hardly remember the surgery itself! And MASSIVE accolades to The Husband who drove my high-as-a-kite self  home, put me to bed, and went out to buy soup and fill prescriptions. I spent the weekend on strong antibiotics and pain pills (which I’ve since discontinued because they’re those crazy addictive ones and I feel like this tooth has cost me enough without adding “opioid addiction” to my life).

And a shout out to my kiddos who were very kind and prayed for me and kept coming into see how I was doing. And especially The Boy who made it a whole 24 hours before asking, “when are you going to make dinner? When are you going to clean the kitchen? When are you going to be a mom again?”

So, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns over here all the time. Sometimes it’s penicillin and lentil soup and chipmunk cheeks. But no toffee. Never toffee.

(And don’t worry – this isn’t the last you’ll hear about my teeth! Watch this space for our next episodes entitled “Here, Wear This Retainer 22 Hours A Day So Your Gap Tooth Stays Gappy” and “Adventures in Implants: You’re Gonna Drill a Screw Into My JawBone?!”)

[PS. Thank you Jesus for dental insurance and oral sedation and dentists who soothe you when you say “I’m terrified” and husbands who heat up split pea soup Amen.]

Crossed an item off my bucket list last night that I didn’t even realize was on it.

I got to watch Willy Wonka in an actual movie theatre! Pretty much felt like this:

I think I was maybe nine years old the first time I saw this movie? It was the day before school vacation (probably spring break, because the day before Christmas break we had assembly in the gym and sang Christmas carols and ate candy canes). We all filed excitedly into the Southwood School gym, sat in rows with smallest grades in the front and biggest grades in the back, and settled in for a fine afternoon.

(Oh yeah – it was TOTALLY reel-to-reel. We all got up for a two-minute stretch when they had to change the reels.)

I’ve loved this movie ever since. I would rent it when I was a kid and disappear into the basement with whatever junk food I could find. As an adult, I finally bought a copy and would pick up a few bars of chocolate and treat myself to weekend viewings. But I never dreamed I’d get to see it on the big screen!

And yet again, Portland delivers.

Our fave little indie movie theatre scheduled two showings in honour of Gene Wilder’s passing and I knew I had to go. The kids joined me, but The Husband stayed home (he finds the movie creepy for some reason…).

Oh, it was so amazing! I never realized how hilarious it was until I got to watch it with a laughing audience. Or how much more fun it is when you share it with a couple hundred other people. And not gonna lie – I totally teared up when Charlie saw that flash of gold.

In honour of the occasion, I even did something I’ve never done before. I did the real-life equivalent of stealing fizzy lifting drink and snuck in these:

Now I’m all for supporting movie theatres, particularly indie ones, and I very happily forked over cash for beer, artisan soda, popcorn, and Salt & Straw ice cream. But there’s NO way I was gonna send off Gene Wilder with house brand chocolate. Nope, the original and best Mr. Wonka deserved no less than imported fair-trade Belgian goodness (with its sole US location in Portland, natch).

Here’s to Mr. Wilder and Mr. Dahl! With humble thanks for chocolate-filled dreams.

 

So I’m a week late on this, BUT since all my ‘Toban and ‘Sotan friends just put their preciouses on the school bus today, I figure it’s still timely. My contribution to the back-to-school-pic barrage:

(How come you can actually see the kids in everyone else’s pics instead of an overwhelming amount of gray siding? Oh yeah…cuz I’m behind the camera on these ones….)

One thing my home peeps don’t have yet is a whole week’s worth of first impressions. First day is too scary and overwhelming to really form an opinion, but one week? Eh, you can get a pretty good sense of how the year will go.

And oooo, my spidey senses are tingling on this one! I think it’s gonna be a good year!

The Girl has classes she LOVES. She is a TA in metalshop (LOL) and Biology (double LOL) and is already coming home with tales of schooling the youngsters in sharp object safety. She also has English (she had to read Unbroken over the summer, so I have high hopes for the group discussion), Chemistry, Mindfulness and Yoga (oh Portland!), Geometry, and History. A bunch of it is stuff she covered in Minnesota (#Edinaacademicinsanityftw) so she’s off to a nice, easy start.

The Boy is equally well-positioned. He informed me that now that he is in 8th grade, he is actually going to try (since, apparently, marks count starting in freshman year, so he wants to get a year’s practice in). Fine by me! He’s got the usual roster of Math, English, Science, History, and Woodshop. Oh and choir! Oh I *do* love choir concerts!!

Both kids have slid pretty much effortlessly back into the school routine. “Pretty much” because we had our standard first-week meltdowns last week, but that’s par for the course. It also may have been somewhat effortless because I let them skip school on Friday, so they didn’t actually get a full week.

(I know! Bad parent! But my BFF cousin and her daughters came into town on Thursday and the first words out of those dang kids’ mouths was “can The Girl and The Boy skip school tomorrow? PLEEEEEEEEEASE.” I am no match for second-cousin-once-removed pleas.)

So, we’ve had a total of five days and each one has been 5/5. Onwards, friends!