liralen | Getting Home and Recovering (Reply)

Spent the morning on Monday trying to sleep in... and then John and Jet and I hit the waterfront to eat at Ivar's and feed the seagulls. The seagulls were loud enough to be mildly intimidating, but it was really nice to just sit in the sun and eat and feed 'em. *laughs* Fish and chips, the clam chowder, and I had a pile of the clam and chips.

Then we wandered through Ye Old Curiosity Shoppe, which John remembered from his childhood. Spooky, crazy, shiny, and magical in the back. From there we drove up to Pike Place Market after watching a freight train go by, and I stopped by World Spice and managed to get exactly what I'd hoped to find. That was neat. We wandered through the market, bought smoked salmon, and headed back to the car when my celphone started going off. It was

stark_black, we'd miscommunicated on times, but we were close. So we went to University Village and the boys stood with me for a bit until we all met up.

I had an absolutely excellent time visiting with

stark_black. She took me to a U-Paint ceramics shop, and I got to paint her something and she did a beautiful bowl for herself as well. She's much better at the sparse thing than I am... but she asked me to do bamboo on the outside and morning glories inside... and I think it will come out nicely. I hope she enjoys the results. I got to give her the scarf as well, for a birthday present. That was fun.

Then she took me to Blue C Sushi in the University Village and to a very nice confectionery after a good long walk through book stores, past shops, and just getting to sit and just talk and talk and not get interrupted by anyone or anything. That was really nice. It was a really good time to really get to know her in real time. It was funny at the beginning when I said, "Hey... you're real."

She got me back to John's parents' home, and got to get introduced to folks. John and Isabel were still up, as John was upgrading stuff and fixing things on the machine to make it more usable.

I had to have some tea and then went to sleep, but poor John didn't get much sleep at all, as the cough has gone to his lungs, and with all my meds it's not that bad and I can sleep, but he couldn't... so when we got up on Tuesday, John was just trashed. He got through breakfast and packing and stuff, and we went South in stages, stopping at the 99 Market and buying the self-pack dinners and half a dozen red bean paste and single egg yolk moon cakes.

I hand carried the moon cakes through all the plane stuff. John was exhausted by the time we got past security, so Jet and I left him and went wandering about looking for ice cream and found some Hot Wheels. For two bucks, I bought Jet a little bit of fast, smooth, red, transparent, moving happiness. There was no ice cream, but the Dilettante had chocolate cheesecake (which is "almost as good as ice cream" as Jet put it), and I also got a 72% dark hot chocolate. Rich... but so good. I suspect a bit of hormonal surge prompted all the chocolate; but it was good and kept both Jet and I pretty happy waiting for the plane and once we were on it as well.

I did all the kid-duty for the flight, and it went just fine, even the bathroom trip where in the middle of it the turbulence started up good again. Jet just giggled, so I went with that.

Once we were back at DIA, we got all our stuff, got to the car, and I drove us home. I unpacked while John got Jet settled into bed, and then got myself taken apart as well. John had a really difficult time sleeping, though, so this morning, when the alarm went off at 7, I was the one up. Jet was lying sideways on his bed, he'd obviously gotten up and turned on his room light, but had half given up in the middle of making his bed. Poor little guy. It was 6 am Pacific time... so a mite early even for him.

I got him breakfast, made him lunch, figured out something for myself, and we ate and played Okami until it was about time to go for the bus. He really missed that, and it wasn't so much the playing himself as just sitting with me and talking about stuff while one or the other of us played or read the words on the screen.

I nearly never do morning duty. Usually John does, as he's just usually awake at that hour, but he was dead from being up half the night. So Jet and I did all the stuff and I delivered the moon cakes to our neighbors, whom had given us some, too, and then got Jet to the bus stop in plenty of time.

The leaves are falling off the cherry trees by the bus stop. Yes, it counts even when the leaves are shaken off by the kids climbing them. *laughs* Jet gave me a wave as he left. What a cool kid.

Quiet day. John didn't get up until late. I mostly caught up with stuff. Tired. I'm still sick myself, I guess. Dinner was short ribs and rice, grilled zucchini, and corn soup. We needed the soup, and after Jet finished his pile of homework after dinner, he and I played more video games together. We started a Crash of the Titans game in *hard* mode, and we're getting better at the teamwork thing rather than the "you're not doing X, Y, or Z!!!" thing that just gets worse with time. "I'm DYING HERE!!!" seems to work... as if one of the two Bandicoots dies, and the other doesn't and can Just Last For Five Seconds, then you both don't lose a life. Tag-team lives. *laughs* It's a cool concept, and it works really well if we know the other one is about to die.

I got to put Jet to bed, and it was really sweet because John's parents gave me a copy of the Original Winnie-the-Pooh with the color illustrations... *happy sigh*. It's a beautiful book, and the rambling style of it, as the author tells Christopher Robin the "real stories, not the remembered ones" about his adventures with Winnie-thar-Pooh and all his friends, is really sweet. The language is simple, rambling, and with these beautiful run-ons that make me think of how Jet speaks sometimes. Jet loves them nearly as much as I do. *laughs*

It was really fun to read the introduction of both Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh (going backwards down the stairs, bump bump bump) to Jet and to have him giggle and listen, rapt.

Wow. It would be fun to write something more like that...