Month: July 2010

Last Sunday, Mom & I drove to “Tin Shed Garden Cafe” to have our breakfast. The street, was a fairly bad place, is being transformed itself by these two owners of this cafe. There are a lot of new and modern shops, restaurants, etc. popped up along the street. Many years back, when these two owners showed up at Portland, broke, decided to open this cafe in this fairly bad neighborhood, no once could believe in their aspiration. See below

http://www.oregonlive.com/dining/index.ssf/2010/07/pbs_documentary_breakfast_spec.html

It really is a “rags to riches” and/or “good from bad” success story that moved everyone, including PBS & me.

When we arrived at the restaurant at 8:30 AM, a lot of cars already parked outside along the street. Inside the restaurant, nothing fancy, but many old mismatched tables, chairs here and there, inside and out. Coffee, tea is self-served. People were friendly and cordial. The prices were pretty reasonable. Customers, by looking and listening to them, seemed to be well-educated & belonged to middle upper class.

But, to my disappointment, the food is not not good as what has been advertised in PBS. But, it is good though. I guessed, that morning, the food had a serious disagreement with my taste buds. Or PBS emphasized its success too much on food instead of “people like to see ordinary people, like us, become successful, especially under very difficult circumstances.”

Or may be, the right chefs didn’t show up to work last Sunday morning.

 Now that Jeremy’s back in town, we are again eating beautiful fruit and vegetables.  It is no secret that when he’s out on business, we eat a lot of kid-friendly crap – pasta, chicken nuggets and scrambled eggs for dinner (I was pretty proud of myself that we ate at home every evening, no pizza delivery for us!) – we have been pretty low on fruits and vegetables.  But no more!  This morning Edda and I shared this wonderful pear/strawberry fruit salad.

Also, while Jeremy was out of town, Big the tadpole, morphed into a frog.  So today was Big’s big day – he got to go back into the wild! 

I hope he’s OK out there and did not already turn into someone’s dinner. 

Edda napped through the big release:

We haven’t done much video chatting in the past, but during Jeremy’s business trip last week, somehow we figured it out.  Pretty fun! 

I have not been a good little blogger this week. I suffered this week from a prolonged fit of anxiety. It has been hard for me to pin down exactly why I have this adrenaline-like anxiety. I hasn’t been very bad, it just feels like I’m about to interview for a job or like I’m about to stand in front of the class and give a speech about turtles or “To Kill a Mockingbird”. I can still work, still cook dinner, still tuck the kids into bed and still talk to other people in a sane way. All good.

Jeremy has been traveling all week again. I miss him. He talks more than the rest of us combined. It’s hard to have a conversation with yourself at night.

I have been sleeping each night with the kids. In the past, I’ve hauled an extra mattress from the basement into the kids’ room, but this time, I just scoot Edda over and we share her twin bed. It’s very crowded, but Edda is pretty good about giving me half of the twin. Vince asked if one night I could sleep with him – but I had to turn him down because he spins around like the hands of a clock during the night. Not the most restful situation.  Edda and I both sleep better in the same bed. I don’t have to get up in the middle of the night when she wakes and she also sleeps later with a warm body next to her.

Vince has been having trouble with spelling. I have known this for many years (OK, well like 18 months, I don’t think he’s been spelling for many years), but I have been ignoring this. Every night we drill word wall words. It is really difficult to spell words like “one”, “pour”, “could” and “said”. One forgets how hard it is to learn to spell the English language.

Yesterday, we bought two licenses for fishing. Here in WA, there is no senior rate, not like SC where people over 65, no fishing license is required. Besides, we bought a lot of other fishing stuffs. We spent a lot.

This morning, we went to nearby fishing hole and tried to catch some fish to fill our freezer (dreaming but not purchase yet). Just five (5) minutes passed, no fish in sight to take a bit. Mom decided to change place to Bonneville Dam, about 20 miles to the east. There we talked to two fish men. They showed us a lot and, enthusiastically & willingly, passed their experiences on how to catch steel heads, salmons & shads. Guess what, we need to change all our bites and gears to suit its needs. In short, keep spending more.

Mom is particularly interested in shads. Now, no one here would like to consume them (too much small bones.) But, it was a life saver for the starving and under-nourished troops of General George Washington along the Delaware River during the American Revolution. It may turned the tide against British army.

Anyway, shad is a priced-fish in Mom’s native hometown, Shanghai. It can fetch US$150.00 per fish. Here, it has millions upon millions of them in May & June near the Bonneville Dam exit. Talking about trade deficit – shads may help a little 🙂 Therefore, we paid special interest on the type of bait they use. We will definitely fish here for shads next year in May and/or June.

I also took some photos of the dog! Meet Charlotte! She is a handful.

I still have my little photography business floating in the back of my mind. I thought I’d open the little business and use whatever I made to donate to Rett Syndrome research. I’ve been not as interested in it lately, I know a photography business is relatively cheap to start, but still, it is some money for equipment, software and such things, but more than $, it’s the time and energy, neither of which I feel like I have right now. Someday! There is so much cool stuff to try and do in this world on top of just the regular stuff like making lunches, doing laundry, calling the exterminator, coordinating child care – stuff including starting your own business, learn to play ping pong, visit the Midwest, take ballet lessons, be better at Scrabble, cook more than just spaghetti and fish sticks, etc. – , I hope I don’t put off too much of it while I’m busy surfing the internet.

I’m slowing working up to actually taking photos of other people. I’ve done a few favors for people in the past and this weekend, I did a session with a friend of mine. I think this one is the best shot I got. Nice even light – I think a little more of her face and a little less of her body would have been better, and maybe a schooch more turned towards me, but I think it’s not too shabby.

(We are still talking about July 4th weekend, even though I know that we are now on the next weekend.) After the Korean BBQ dinner (or maybe the next day), I was walking down the steps of our deck (which I do at least every other day) to take the compost out to the composter when I spy a series of holes on the handrail…

My first thought was THOSE *&^% KIDS have been taking a hammer to the deck! I’m going to kick their little behinds when I catch them. And then I see:

Argh! Someone is eating the house! I just about fainted. So we call in the neighborhood pest control who tell me that it’s carpenter ants and bees that are destroying the deck. As I told Jeremy, this is the trifecta of things I hate! Pesticides, bugs and home repair. I asked all the neighborhood homeowners and hear countless stories of termite/carpenter ants/carpenter bee infestations – there is so much to learn as a homeowner. Being a grown up means that instead of spending your money on cool stuff, you get to spend hard earned money on pesticides. Sigh.

I spent a lot of time today learning about bugs. Apparently the actual hole that you see here:

is caused by a woodpecker who sees the bee going in and out of a small hole underneath the wood board. The woodpecker knows that the carpenter bee is going to lay some yummy larvae in the wood, so then the woodpecker just perches there and bangs away until he gets to the savory morsel.