My friend Emily had knee surgery today so we wanted to do something nice for her. My efforts involved lasagna and spinach salad. Laylee’s efforts were more on point. She offered to come and read to her since she can’t do sports for a while and created this highly topical card:

Poor Jack is dead. Poor JackAgain is dead. I noticed him laying on the bottom of the bowl a few days ago, his untouched pellets swollen on the surface of the water. This is not unusual for JackAgain. He will sometimes lie on the bottom of the bowl for days at a time as if sleeping or in deep thought, only to startle when the glass is tapped and then sink back down to the bottom.

I think he was always prone to depression, a little fish stuck in a bowl with no chance of escape.

When I tapped on the glass this time, his lifeless body just swayed with the motion of the water but nary a fin did he flap. I tried again, this time noticing that his body seemed to be covered in sort of a waxy film.

So I told the kids. They took it okay. Laylee was off and running in a few seconds. Magoo seemed fine until suddenly he was not. His eyes filled with tears. “JackAgain is dead?” he cried. “Yes buddy, I’m afraid he is. But it’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

Magoo reached out for some mama loves and I picked his giant boy body up in my arms and held him like a baby. Seeing the attention he was getting, Laylee came running over. “I can’t believe he’s dead,” she faux-sobbed in a voice vaguely reminiscent of a half-way decent impression of real sadness. “I just can’t believe it. Oh JackAgain!”

My eyes did not do a full roll. They just sort of drifted heavenward and my eyelashes only fluttered a bit as I reached out a hand to touch her un-Oscar-worthy play-grieving arm. “Yeah. We’ll sure miss him,” I lied.

So we held a bowl-side flush funeral for the fish. Dan asked for advice on what he should say and we came up with a Finding Nemo meets The Lion King sort of Christian sermon about how all drains lead to the ocean and he’ll then be eaten by a bigger fish in the great circle of life but his spirit will live on in fishy heaven. You see, I have a firm belief in an afterlife and resurrection but I’ll be darned if I could explain exactly what JackAgain’s spirit was doing at that moment. Honestly I didn’t much care.

I have disliked that fish with a fervent dislikishness since nearly the day we brought him home almost THREE YEARS AGO. We had gone through a series of fish rather rapidly. They would die or eat each other and we’d get a new one. I was sick of cleaning fish poop out of the bowl but each time I’d cave and buy another to quell Laylee’s grief. When she was 3, it was more believable.

The day I bought JackAgain, I told Dan he was the last fish I’d ever buy. In 3-6 months when he kicked the bucket, I was done. The kids loved him for about 2 minutes every couple of weeks when their friends were over but other than that, it was just me, Jack, and the stinking bowl of fish ish. He couldn’t do anything cool. I sensed he was unhappy in his little glass prison. He looked weird. My confessions of periodically forgetting to care for him earned me nasty comments from pet lovers who felt I should not be allowed to reproduce considering my inhumane treatment of Betta fish.

At some point, around when I read the first book in the Twilight series, I began to wonder about how he was living so long. Maybe he wasn’t alive but some sort of undead fish who would “live” forever, pooping and tormenting me, long after my children were grown and gone.

Apparently he was un-undead because now he’s actually dead and I think we all know that’s impossible for an un. I can’t say there wasn’t some glee as I cleaned out his bowl for the last time, running his little glass rocks and plastic plants through the dishwasher to remove any deadness that might have rubbed off on them.

Since he left no last will and testament, his home and other personal effects will be donated to my neighbor Natasha, the marine biologist, to be used in some sort of humane and deeply noble project that will possibly absolve me from openly admitting my failure to love one of God’s creatures.

Guess who swam across a lake at 7:00 this morning and now has algae-looking stuff in unmentionable places? Not naming names. Follow my eyes.

I’ve been casually training for a triathlon I’m not going to compete in because my ladies are doing it and I’m nothing if not a follower. Last Saturday and then again this morning we worked on our open water swimming. There are many signs that we are taking this athletic challenge of athleticism in a very seriously serious manner, which include but are not limited to:

-Giggling like wee girls.

-Squealing as we stand at the edge of the frigid drink and then eventually needing to be pushed in (This will go over well on race day, I imagine. The shotgun goes off. There’s a flurry of splashtastic activity. One lone spaztard in my heat stands with her arms folded, dancing from one foot to the other, “OOOoooooo… but it’s so COOOOLDD. Tee-hee-hee.” Grin. “I hope I win.”).

-Doing the back stroke most of the way, even though one woman warned us that when she switched to backstroke in her last race, the medi-kayak was deployed to see what was wrong with her.

-Periodically swimming up next to another athletic athlete and saying, “Shark Week,” in a most menacing way.

I’ll be going out of town when the other ladies take the plunge, ½ mile swim followed by an 18 mile bike ride followed by a 3.5 mile run and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was just a teeny bit glad in the smallest corner of my heart to have a good excuse for my athletic truancy.

But it’s fun to train with them. Mostly. In the middle part. For a couple of minutes. After my body is numb and before my brain is filled with green water.

There was even one sublime moment during Saturday’s swim when a duck swam past me in a not creepy, we’re-all-part-of-the-great-circle-of-life, kind of way and then a bald eagle swooped down and grabbed a fish right out of the water and glided off to munch on it’s still beating heart.

If I were Native American or even had a Native American name like Pocahontas or John Smith, I think that moment would have moved me into postponing my trip so I could complete the race, a mystical sign from my animal brothers that I had raw fish left to clutch or races to eat or something.

Alas, I am the whitest white person I know so what it actually did after the initial “WOW” wore off was remind me that lakes contain things, living things, things that are cold, wet, slimy and potentially man-eating. If a fish were to bump into me while I was swimming, I feel fairly certain that I would make no sound as my heart stopped and I slipped ignominiously to Davy Jones’ locker.

Not thinking of my neurotic aquatic terror, following the first race in which I had gotten a tiny piece of water in my eye, I went to Tarzhay and purchased a pair of goggles so that I could see WHILE SWIMMING. IN THE LAKE. WHERE THE FISH AND DEAD BODIES LIVE.

I’ve always been scared of dead bodies under dark water but after watching that one scary movie where Harrison Ford plays a villain and you spend the whole movie asking “Han Solo, why’s it gotta go down like this Homey?” I now know that dead bodies under water are true.

So today as I swam along, I kept catching glimpses of my paler than death, whiter than normal white people arm flashing by as I swam. At which time I would die just a little, thus partially self-fulfilling prophecy, and scream under water, sure I had seen the floating remains of some poor victim of Mr. Solo. This would result in the inhalation of said water and in a fervent vow to never ever EVER again open my eyes in those way-too-clear goggles of terror. Then I would swim with eyes closed way off course until my compatriots yelled my name and pointed back to shore. I repeated this zig-zag pattern all over the lake, getting worked up to the point where I was sure that the skirt on my tankini was really a giant strand of semi-sentient sea weed tangled around my legs and bent on my most hideous destruction.

One of my friends told me after the swim that she was only in it to get an athletic body like the other triathletes she knows. I thought about this and I realized that hers is an unrealistic goal for someone like me.

People who eat cheese will never have triathlete bodies. I mean, they can sample cheese betimes at cheese tasting events. But I’m fairly sure that people who EAT cheese will never look like that.

That’s why I’m in it for the glory.

We were driving by the animal hospital the other day when Laylee pointed excitedly, “Look mom. Look. That’s the vegetarian. If JackAgain is ever sick, we’ve GOTTA take him to the vegetarian!”

It seems reasonable. They’d probably get along okay, seeing as they have similar dietary restrictions.

This morning I woke up with a killer sore throat, a scratchy-eared, phlegm-rattling, too-tender-for-toast sore throat. And I’m wondering. Should I go to the carnivore or would an omnivore be okay? I did eat a salad with my chicken last night.

Do you have your very own marine biologist to change your Betta fish’s water? I do. I pay her with leftover enchiladas and stories about all the crazy people I’ve known in my life. She likes the stories and I like that when she leaves my house, it’s always cleaner than when she came and I always feel better about my life.

She does a good job hiding the fact that she may be judging me because I don’t eat organic biodegradable recycled soy milk or use free-range toilet paper. When I feed her and tell her not to ask what’s in the Mexican food, she doesn’t ask what’s in the Mexican food.

Tonight I invited her over to share some reheated culinary loveliness if she promised to close her eyes to the abundant evidence that I’d had several friends and their precious spawn in and out of my house all day, and hosted and cooked for a birthday luncheon. The main floor of my house was covered in a thick blanket of playdate sputum and I was seriously contemplating waiting 24 hours to remember what I wrote earlier this week and get my act together.

So while I rattled around in the kitchen, popping the pan of enchiladas back in the oven and nuking the other leftovers, she asked what she could do to help. Like any embarrassed woman would do, I told her not to worry about it and for heck’s sake to keep her shoes on when walking on my crusty kitchen floor.

She went into the family room and started picking up toys with unnatural speed. She picked up books, cars, blocks and spit-soaked Spiderman-flavored cheese crackers. She put away toys the kids thought they were still using and said, “Out of sight, out of mind.” In 20 minutes she managed to tidy up my entire main floor, the main floor that had looked like a tornado-ravaged Value Village. Then she joined me in the kitchen where I was ineffectually shuffling the dishes who were waiting for their turn in the magical automatic dish washing shower stall. In my house, dishes who are capable of washing themselves are never subjected to hand washing. It just wouldn’t be right.

She stepped to the sink and started rinsing the waiting dishes. She separated them according to shape, size and possibly color. As she went to dump some plastic silverware in an opaque pitcher of water to soak, she noticed something moving in the water and jumped, “AH! I almost dumped these dirty dishes in with your fish!”

I apologized for keeping JackAgain in a dish so near the drain board. He’d been there for 4 days because I was “cleaning his fishbowl.” In a miraculously non-judgmental tone, that somehow communicated “I want to save the dolphins but I still like you,” she insisted that he be moved back to his bowl immediately before he had a heart attack from the stress of his current living arrangements.

So she cleared out one side of the sink and brought his nasty stinky bowl of old ishy water over to wash. What happened next is a blur but there was a loud crash, Laylee had appeared out of nowhere, was now smiling up at me too innocently to really be innocent and the floor was covered in blech.

I muttered something about how much it stunk as I ran upstairs to get some towels. “It’s okay,” my neighbor called from the kitchen. “At least it doesn’t smell as bad as a dead whale.” She’s a marine biologist. She’s seen and smelled things I hope never to experience in my lifetime. She cleaned my house and saved the whales living in it. She ate my not-from-Whole-Foods food and asked for my recipes. She kept me company on another long lonely night and she told me I was a good mom.

I want to be that kind of friend. I know I’m grateful to have a few.

Today I offer you some time-honored bits of advice that have served me well in my life. I hope they work for you and if you have some of your own, feel free to share.

1. If none of the boys are worth dating, don’t date em. If none of the food in the house is worth eating, don’t mindlessly stuff your face. If none of your kids are not having a fit of angry bovine proportions, don’t take them shopping.

2. When someone is waking up with a clean pull-up after every nap but the pull-ups are still disappearing from the drawer at a steady rate and you start to notice a strange smell in the family room, check under the crack in the slipcover before the acidic pee of death and destruction claims your couch as its final resting place.

3. Never engage in a fight with your spouse if he is still asleep.

4. When your grocery store checker asks you how things are going, don’t really tell her. Do compliment her on the gold star on her nametag and feel free to make faces behind any irate customer who may be harassing her.

5. If you grow tired of feeding your fish, leave him alone with your husband for two weeks. They will bond and begin speaking to each other in the language of fishy bachelorhoodic solidarity. Your husband will teach the fish tricks and develop a tender feeding routine. You will never need to feed or cuddle your his fish again.

6. Don’t purchase any item of clothing that you don’t feel good about dousing with poop, shredding with craft scissors, rolling in mud, scraping with sand paper, throwing into a vat of chunky yellow vomit, dipping in lighter fluid and then incinerating with a blow-torch. You can postpone taking this advice until you’re ready to start having children.

6. Don’t eat the pigs feet.

By now you probably know that much of Washington has been swallowed up in the great waters of the Puget Sound apocalypse.

Our town is effectively cut off from civilization as the rivers in the area have swollen to gigantical proportions. Here are a few photos:

This was taken a couple of months ago. Notice the mint-green buildings in the top left corner accross the river.

Here’s a broad picture of the flooding today. The mint-green buildings are in the back behind the submerged picnic structures and floating trash cans. You can click to enlarge.

Dan and his mom on a bench by the river:

The same bench yesterday morning:

Red arrow points to the same bench today:

Magoo and Auntie (isn’t she gorgeous?) at the park several yards from the river. Notice the trash cans in the background.

Same garbage cans, now floating, taken from the opposite direction. Don’t worry. Magoo and Auntie are safe on dry land.

Some family friends pose atop a wall at a major intersection. In the background you can see the bridge Dan would normally drive on to come home.

The Red Cross has been asking for clothes and blankets for the many people pulled from the river who are staying at local shelters. We currently have no access to a hospital, but the local grocery store is keeping up with demand for corndogs and tomato bisque so we’re in good shape.

Luckily we just practiced for a disaster and it scared me badly enough to stock up on anything we were lacking. It’s actually quite nice to have Dan home with us, our CD player still playing Backstreet Boys and the heater keeping us cozy on our tiny island. We’ve only run into a few problems.

Ballet class — the teacher left for a few minutes to pick up her daughter from school and while she was gone, the last road to our town became submerged in water. Laylee and the three other little girls who showed up for class were so sad that we slipped into the unlocked dance studio, turned on the music and let them go crazy, freestyle.

Voting — My polling place was across the river and although the bridge was still accessible when I headed out, I was afraid it wouldn’t be when I wanted to come back so I ended up filling out a provisional ballet at the one location near our house. By the time I finished voting, the last road had been closed.

Mice — Dan went into the attic to check for roof leaks and found something much more frightening than a $20,000 repair bill — MOUSE DROPPINGS!!!! ACK! BLECK!

Bad planning — Our crawl space is filling with water. Upon investigation, it appears that our gutters drain directly into a pipe that flows into the crawl space. There is no drain in the crawl space, just a giant swimming pool for the mice. ACK! BLECK!

For now the power is on so we can watch DVDs till our heads explode, blog, and nuke the corndogs (We do not eat corndogs on a regular basis. Corndogs are food reserved for circus trips, nuclear holocausts and floods).

DYM is hosted locally by a friend with very limited backup power so if our power goes out, the site will go bu-bye for a while. It will just add to the drama. Where is Kathryn? Can she cook her corndogs? Has she been swallowed by the great leviathan? You won’t know till the power comes back on and the power won’t come back on until the roads are clear and the roads won’t be clear until the waters subside and the waters won’t subside until the dove can bring us back an olive branch. And here I float in a house full of animal droppings. It seems almost biblical. Peace out.

It could kill them.

Laylee has learned to shell her own peanuts by chewing the shell into tiny shards, spitting it all over my counter and then eating half of the peanut and dropping the other half on the ground.

I know very well from my pediatrician’s advice and the King James version of What to Expect that Magoo shouldest not cometh in contact with a nut or a nut product until he reacheth the age of two, lest he become a human incendiary device and explodeth into a firebomb of allergenic destruction and woe be unto him.  I think that’s almost a direct quote from the book.

He also has very few teeth and nuts are a huge choking hazard so I’ve taken great pains to make Laylee understand that there will be dire consequences for leaving peanuts around where he can get them.

Me:  Don’t drop the nuts on the floor!
Laylee:  Why?
Me:  Because Magoo’ll get ”˜em and they could make him very sick.
Laylee:  Why?
Me:  And he might even DIE!

So today, she’s actively destroying peanuts at the kitchen counter and Magoo attempts to climb up on her chair.

Laylee:  Magoo, NO!  You can’t eat peanuts because they’ll kill you…
[She raises her eyebrows and looks at me like a snooty librarian peeking over her reading glasses to say, “Boys, you should know better than that.”]
… and then you’ll die.

Her subtle warning is lost on the little jub who grunts and continues to pull himself up until she gently nudges him off to blam himself on the kitchen floor.

Five minutes later she asks, “Why will peanuts kill Magoo?”
Me:  [Because they’re sadistic, bloodthirsty and evil and they hate little round Jack-O-Lantern-headed boys.]  Because they are hard and round and they could choke him [to death with their bare hands].

Now peanuts are not the only things around here that have it in for poor Magoo.  He is also being ferociously hunted by walls, too long pants, and air currents.  He also needs to be protected from the shish.  I know, I know, I said that Magoo was going to kill the little shish, but it seems it may be the other way around.

This evening I walked into the livingroom to the sound of splashing and crunching, never a good combination.  Magoo had one hand in the fishbowl and his mouth was full of something blue and he was crunching away.  ACK!  JackAgain!  I rushed over and pulled from his mouth… some bluish aquarium rocks.  They’re round glass pebbles, big enough to clean easily and just the right size to block his airway completely if he breathes funny or tumbles off the couch, his preferred method of dismounting.

Not good.  “No Magoo! NO SHISH!” I said seriously as I lifted him down and ran to get my camera.  I left the shish in place just long enough for him to climb back up so I could get this picture.  He looks menacing, but he’s the one in real danger, I promise.

In random CD news, can I tell you how much I am loving the Curious George soundtrack?  If I like it so much, why don’t I marry it?  Because I don’t believe in bigamy, and Dan has promised never to die, at the hands of a rogue peanut or otherwise… ever.  Thanks for asking. 

It’s like Jack Johnson is prancing through a sunny tropical jungle, when he comes across the essence of Simon, Garfunkel, Raffi, the early Beatles, and a kid-friendly Jimmy Buffet.  He bottles it, comes back to New York, gets some friends together and lays down a record one lazy afternoon. Happy, happy music my friends.

reasons: Laylee asleep with her arms outstretched completely trusting completely secure, the patio drenched in blue moonlight like it was lit on a soundstage