Friday, April 28, 2006

Peace, Love and Dim Sum

Well, all is smilies and flowers in the Meepers/Mooshi household - The Lakers have just won against the Suns! Not that I care at all, but when one is married to a man who's (whose? whos'? help Spelling Police!) Final Act as a Single Man was to tape the Laker game....and who, it must be said, checked on said game from the bridal suite...one finds that life is much richer when "The Team" is winning.


Other Good Things Lately include:

-Going to a (The, S. would say) custom knife show up in Solvang today. Many bright, shiny, expensive, sharp things there. The makers pretty much always seem happy to see us and some of them remember us from year to year, so we get to catch up a bit. I'm not the knife collector in this family; I actually was just along for the ride and so S. would have more than one entry into a couple of drawings. Mind you, these drawings don't result in any merchandise being given away; no, they are merely chances to purchase the knives from the Master Craftspeople who make them. Most of them are more artists than metalworkers, and they are generally regarded as The Top 100 Makers in the "knife world". The great things about this show besides seeing all the amazing work are: It is only about a half hour from our front door and some of the knives sell for double or even triple what we can buy them for at the show.

-Running into Noah Wyle at the show with his adorable, tow-headed little son on his shoulders. Actually, I was looking at the kid and actually said aloud, "Ohhh! What a cute little boy!" before I actually realized that Mr. W. likely thought I was trying to talk to him. Which, in fact, I was not - I was never a big ER fan, truth be told. Now my sister (Pamby, the "baby") is another story... she went crazy when I called her later on and told her about it. David Crosby was there, as he always is. Noah Wyle sported a fashionable half-inch of dark stubble, deliberate, but not over-mussed hair and a leather/sheepswool jacket; his little son, (I'm told by The Google that he's called Owen) looked adorably bed-headed, slumped over his dads' shoulders.

My parents, Mama and Papa de Meepers, will be in town tomorrow evening. Naturally, since I told them last month that I'd be up to my eyeballs with a wedding this Friday. Thus is the way of all parents, I think. When I came back from Costa Rica the first time (and when S. and I went together) and told them how much they'd love it, that it was inexpensive and easy to get to, pretty and relatively unspoiled etc... and that we wanted to go on a family trip.. what happened? They nodded, smiled, and immediately informed us that they thought it would be more fun to make it a 30-person tour*. This from people who, due to no fault of their own, have never left the country.

Truly, I love and respect them, but they simply do not comprehend the fact that it is a Bad Idea to make your first trip to a place like that a giant convention of braying tourists. Period. Despite our best reasonings, they completely and entirely side-stepped the possibility of doing something with just our family. We had our first "family trip" the week my grandmother died (Let me tell you: Northeastern Oregon in January + Sudden passing of a relative + A full house of 'memories" and a town of less then 400 people and almost no wine to be had = Good Times, baby, good. times! More fun than exploratory surgery!) The second was this past January, in Colorado in the snow. I don't do snow, really, I won't need to see snow for another fifteen or twenty or fifty years.

Like Molly, sometimes I think they just do not hear me when I am talking. It is entirely possibly that when I talk, they are envisioning the six-year-old me, in braids and a nightgown, hopping up and down, playfully bossing them in her tiny-woman voice. Even though I've been in or around the wedding business since I was sixteen years old (meaning: No summer holidays of any length), they've not quite managed to catch on to this fact yet. Usually my dad genially admonishes me to, "just blow it off," (riiight... a wedding-related item...not going to happen withot a darned good reason) and too "come to the beeeach, come outside for once," as though I cloister myself in the house for fun. Generally what happens when they come out is this: They arrive, and the weather goes down the tube. They grimly lament our coastal fogs (summer) or say through shivers "how waaarm it was at home!" (spring, fall) or a week prior to the trip, try to re-schedule for a "full moon" (when I'm trying to have a surprise party for them). If I suggest a quiet family dinner for the four of us, they will invariably invite six or eight of our/their friends and the friends' kids. It isn't that we don't all love each other to bits - they just don't hear me (or S.) when we speak to them. Allow me to re-iterate: I'm really, really happy they are coming!

Third: I may be taking a girls' weekend with my girlfriend up to the City. Cannot wait! Chinatown! Sourdough breadbowls! Berkeley! This guy and his lovely wife! (time permitting) Martinis without children asking for "just a siiip, pleeease!" The Stinking Rose! Streetcars! Art! More exclamation marks, please! Unfortunately, without Ruby, there will be no pictures... but I promise to try and do a re-cap when I recover. I mean, return.



Peace, love and dim sum to you!

3 comments:

Peter said...

Hey, coooooool! What weekend? Cuz I'm actually going a guy's weekend this Saturday/Sunday. Where are we going? Here, of course.

Maya said...

The weekend of the 12th. Provided the creek don't rise. Hee!

Peter said...

Hey, so we'll be at a quick build Sat day, but can hook up with you that evening or Sunday. Email me directly & let me know, mkay?