Sunday, July 20, 2014

A Yurt in the Dirt

Dear Society,
If there are any objections to living the rest of your life in a larger than life tent than I don't want to hear them. And if you would like to persist and convince us why the idea is less than a stroke of genius than please put it into the suggestion box but if there are no objections to be raised I will tell you about Yurts and why it never hurts to live in a Yurt.

You know when you have an epiphany of some sort? And your heart swells and grows three times too large? That occurred when I realized just a week ago that my idea that I need to live in a house is so wrong, its wronger than wrong. I can live life in a yurt. People all around the world do it. Mongolians, desert dwellers, some star wars characters do it and not to mention nomads and I will one day. They are like those tents in Harry Potter that have an expansive spell put on them to create more space to include beds, a kitchen, a wood fire stove (practical in a tent? yes. Safe? hopefully, fingers crossed tightly on that detail) You can have stories in a Yurt, not only floors, but bedtime stories that change just by the fact that you are tucked up so nicely in a bunk bed and you are staring up through that large window that opens to the stars and stories are being whispered all around, like passing a bowl of popcorn. It's a life long girls camp opportunity with much less estrogen and cat fights. (Fingers also crossed on that one). But Yurts, Yurts, Yurts, they circle my head daily, rugs skip through too, colors like chartreuse and mandarin chase each other around and I just smile at the sky happy in my mind yurt.

So when you are asking yourself, where will Abbey end up someday? I'll be in a Yurt in a parent's backyard with surfboards on the side, blonde babies booking it about, lavender on the side with sunflowers and only a swimsuit with a skirt wrapped around. I'll die of skin cancer, sure, but I'll have lived in a yurt in the dirt. It just cannot go wrong!

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Oddie and Arrin (Addie and Orrin)


There's Addie, a wee graduate. 
There's Orrin, the O-man. 

This is simply a nostalgic post, after finding every moment I could set down and run over to the house next door with the drooliest beast and his friends (these are the dogs) who guard the door and extensive amounts of leaping geckos, spotted lizards, and scurrying miniature prehistoric beasts. I would hear screams before I even got inside, they would waft out the screen door, one would be from Addie for Coco and another would be Orrin having a shout because he could! Swimsuits and life-jackets later 

we were swimming, or leaping, or kicking like mermaids, or playing tag strictly in the shallow area, throwing each other all about racing to the side of the pool, climbing out and opening our arms leaping out stomachs aimed for the water because you can always belly flop when you are wearing a padded life jacket. 
More screams let every neighbor know, this is FUN! 

Then when Dillon gets back from work (warning: quintessential family scenario ahead) he hops in the pool and soon there are whirlpools and Erik is flipping up and in too, Orrin gets more deliriously joyful, sometimes jealous and sometimes enraged but these emotions are fleeting mostly and if not we can talk to him and then 
we are in a black flatbed truck with surf and paddle boards bouncing in the back and I Spy is occurring, Addie always smacks her hands and flings a hand motion towards you when you get it right. I taught her to shoot little guns with her fingers, to clap and clap, which is much more darling on her than on me. 
Finally we reach a bay we can take them out in, and we do and its wild horses racing down the waves as fast as they can be picked up, or survivors shipwrecked trying to stroke those lazy turtles that 
Breathe 
sporadically across the face of waves. Feet in the water tingle dramatically as if at that very second they were being eyed like some delicious entree but Oman and Ads are perched far enough on the front of the boards that I don't fret. (even nannies fret). 

Addie loves to demand the horse to go "FASTER FASTER" and then in that critical moment when the wave catches under the feet of the surfboard the screams get higher and higher and I'm barely paddling because my arms are useless to laughter brigades. Completely helpless to all of that. 

And any perfect surf sesh deserves a slushee even for the naughtiest nymph and goblin, or if they were especially good you get a F'Real as an option. I was sometimes so good I got a F'real, for real. 
We all get back in the Sister Walls, Dill's pickup, and cruise down the highway with the two silliest, squirmiest, funniest, gorgeousest babies on the North Shore just telling tall tales of bathroom trips and booger quesadilla's (Dillon may be twenty four but a good booger joke is never lost on him) (I may be nineteen but a good poop reference is never lost on me either). You'd think heads would start nodding, they do, except they aren't Addie or Orrin, Dillon drinks rockstars to keep it all on the road and I just keep my bouncing noggin up with stilts and many supports, including heads of Addie or Oman but I get pushed off quickly. 

Addie and I sing Frozen and Orrin accompanies with more gusto than either of us could muster up, he has hand motions for the drama of it all, he has a sneaky grin flashed when he screams, "be the good girl..." And wouldn't this surprise you? We laugh, boy, does he feed off that quick loud breathes we call chuckles, his practically gummy smile almost falls off his face he loves being funny so much. Those missing teeth, those cowlicks, those heavy breaths out noses when thinking extremely hard. I'm talking about Dillon, not the kids. 

But those two gave me Hawaiian joy. And lots of good lessons. Nannying, parenting, being with little people

it's good stuff!