heredity

It's funny what we pass on to our kids, and I say that sitting at the computer eating cold chicken fried rice out of a Chinese take out container.

For breakfast.

I remember walking in the kitchen as a kid and seeing my dad lean against the counter in his bathrobe with the little white take out box in one hand and a fork in the other scarfing down cold fried rice or chow mein. I thought it was horrible that he did that. Gross.

But anytime we have Chinese take out you can find me eating cold fried rice out of the carton the next day. Heredity.

It causes me to wonder what bothersome traits I may pass on to K... I don't have to search too hard to see ways in which she has already taken after me... she has my imagination.

That can be a beautiful thing, and as I watch her play with dolls or just a piece of paper and hear her whispering secrets to the world she's created I'm proud of her. When she sits on a chair swinging her legs loudly singing lyrics she's made up on the spot I glow with pride. When she dictates a poem to me in hopes I'll write it down for her I marvel at her innovation and when she writes and illustrates a fantastic story with nothing more than a pencil and a pad of post it notes I am awestruck...

But all that greatness, it comes at a price. With all the beautiful wanderings of her mind come the maudlin cries of a girl whose mind can reach the farthest, darkest corners of this universe... and then venture a little further. Her nightmares and scary imaginings are every bit as vibrant as her dreams and stay with her just as long...

I've explained to her, and I think she understands, that with the good there is often some bad. Things have a way of balancing themselves out. That it's hard to grasp happiness when you haven't known sorrow. Fearlessness without Fear. Day with out Night...

I'm glad she has such an active imagination, such a creative mind... but sometimes I wish she'd just pick up a carton of cold fried rice instead...

camikaos goes to the movies...

It is a rare occasion indeed when Dr. Normal and I get to go out of the house just the two of us without serious prior arrangement, but it just happened to work out that way on Sunday in the late afternoon.

We'd had a long weekend of fun and fancy, but all that fun was a lot of hard work so at the end of our weekend, knowing that Dr. Normal had one more day off to look forward to, we decided to take advantage of the fact that my mom is visiting and staying with us. We changed clothes and gears (Sunday morning saw Dr. Normal playing a gig in Sellwood Park) and headed out the door.

After a stop to talk to some neighbors, another to pick up some perfume and then a little pause as we randomly ran into some neighbors who moved away a year or so ago we headed down to the waterfront for perfect martinis and a lovely dinner.

We were having too much fun, enjoying each others company too much.

We didn't want the evening to end.

We each had our own idea of what to do with our stolen time:

Dr. Normal thought it was a perfect evening to stroll hand in hand along the water. For us to spend some quiet time talking and admiring the beautiful weather while strolling along the river that we were married on.

I thought it was a good time to watch and action flick.

I won.

When dinner was finished up we got into Dr. Normal's car and left the sanity of the city to head out to suburbia where there was an 8 pm showing of The Dark Knight that wasn't sold out. It was a big sacrifice for him to spend our precious alone time driving out to a movie theater. In the years that Dr. Normal and I have been together we have probably seen less than 10 movies in a big theater together.

He hates them, big theaters that is. We have a small locally owned one screen theater in our neighborhood that he'll go to if a good movie is playing but other than that he can't be bothered. I respect that. I appreciate. I agree. I hate those big theaters with 15 screens and huge crowds with overpriced over salted food and too loud sound systems. But...

isn't there always a but?

The Dark Knight isn't playing at our theater and we don't always have my mom around to watch K for us, to put her to bed, to allow me an evening out with my husband when I don't have to worry about our daughter.

And I really realllllly wanted to see it. REALLY REALLY REALLY.

So he gave me what I wanted. Gave up his sunset stroll on the river to take me too a movie that he wanted to see, but would have been happy to wait for it to come out on DVD.

For that, I really owe him thanks, and an apology.

We drove out to the mall, parked in the garage, walked to the theater and bought tickets. The only think that kept Dr. Normal from screaming and ripping his skin off was that we didn't have to wait in line. We shelled out $20 for our 2 tickets and I know that everyone says this all the time, but really $20 for the two of us to just get into the theater??? I can buy a movie for that... I frequently do buy a movie for that! For less than that!

But I really wanted to see the movie, REALLY REALLY wanted to see it.

We headed inside and stepped up to the snack counter where they had one thing going for them... they had cherry coke. I asked how large a large was and the counter girl showed me a soda larger than my cat. I asked how big a medium was and she showed me a soda larger than my head.

I ordered a small... it was still huge.

I got Dr. Normal a small bag of popcorn and she asked if he wanted butter on it. I could see the vein twitching in his forehead. I quickly told her no, but even as she was walking off to scoop up his fluffy popcorn goodness he was grumbling about the fact that it wasn't even actually really butter! "FALSE ADVERTISING" he loudly snarled as she was turning back toward us with his bag of popcorn. I paid her quickly and ushered him along. Thankfully our theater was the closest one so I steered him in and we found our seats...

That's when it got bad, really bad... they were showing commercials. Not just one commercial but one after another until I felt like I'd been watching ads for hours. Dr. Normal couldn't take it so he pulled out his iPhone and popped in his headset, closed his eyes and began playing Wagner as loud as he could hoping to drown out the inane advertisements that were sending him into a frenzy...

When an especially riveting piece came on he handed me one of the ear pieces so I could listen too.

There were at least 30 minutes of commercials before the disembodied movie theater voice over woman said it was time for previews, guess what? SHE LIED.

Even after she said it was time for previews there were still MORE COMMERCIALS.

(yes I know that previews are just commercials for other movies... I get that I do...)

It cost $10 per person to get into the movie and they still make us watch 30+ minutes of commercials?!! I hate commercials, that's why I have TiVo. Dr. Normal hates commercials, that's one of the reasons he doesn't watch TV.

When the previews finally started in earnest we made fun of the stupid movies coming out (except the new James Bond movie... we can't wait to see that, I hope it comes to our small local theater).

Then it was finally time or The Dark Night to start...

Dr. Normal pulled out of his justifiable but incredibly unpleasantly grumpy funk and turned off his music, we curled up and watched the movie...

When it was over (yes, that's right... I'm not telling you anything about the movie) we stayed in our seats until everyone had finished shoving and elbowing to get out the doors and then we strolled out hand in hand and headed for our car.

I'm just glad we didn't have to watch any commercials after the movie or Dr. Normal might have imploded before we made it home.

panic...

Monday was a day completely full.

Mr. Kaos awoke early and started his day.

A little later I woke up and started my day.

A little later than that I woke up a sleepy headed K.

We did all the ordinary Monday morning things (except that Mr. Kaos was working from home).

Once the morning routine was out of the way we started getting ready to go. Xithor and Sadimac arrived to watch K for a while in the lunchtime part of the day and Mr. Kaos and I skidded out the door and hurried down town for Lunch 2.o.

We went, we saw, we conquered. We met a few nice people, saw a few people we know, sat with some friends while eating in a vast riser like area within Wieden+Kennedy and enjoyed a couple of hours with lovely Portland tech types before heading home.

That having gone well, I was content as I sat and listened to K as she told me all about her lovely 2.5 hours with her uncle and aunt.

Then I did some things I needed to get done, did some more things that needed to get done and then threw in a load of wash just to top things off... Still working to wrap up the necessary portion of my day I sat down at my computer to check a restaurant's menu and to recheck movie times (as we were heading out with some friends to do those things in short order). Things had been running smoothly all day, so really it was not a surprise to me when my computer didn't turn on.

"Fuck" I muttered under my breath.

I gave it a few tries but it wasn't intending to turn on for me so I closed up my laptop and set it aside. I quickly logged onto Mr. Kaos' old tank of a laptop (the one I am writing on now) and checked the few things that I needed to. I choseto keep the broken computer to myself. There was nothing we could do about it at the moment and it would only make Mr. Kaos grumpy... better to let him enjoy his dinner and movie with his family and friends...

Not much time passed, but alot got done and we suddenly found ourselves at 5 o'clock with our lovely dinner dates knocking at our door. We gathered K and a small toy and stepped out the door with mister and missburrows and then all together we grabbed a quick bite to eat.

The food was good, the movie was wonderful and the company was great. Our evening's entertainment drawing to an end we all walked back to our house. On the way I informed the entire crew of the untimely passing of my laptop. I was commended on my calmness over the whole matter. I realized that I was very calm about the whole thing. Last time this happened (only a year ago) I really lost my cool. Good for me, I thought.

Once inside I had K put on her nightgown, tucked her into bed and read her a story. Moments after I kissed her goodnight she slipped off to dreamland. I headed into my bedroom after a long day and curled up in bed. Mr. Kaos had more work to do, status reports of some kind, so as he worked late into the night I lounged only a foot or so away from him to read my book. It was soothing to be so close to him even though we were both wrapped up in our own doings...

It had been a really good day and I didn't let a stupid computer dying change that.

But it was getting late, and I was getting tired.

I got up and went in the bathroom. I peed, washed my hands, brushed my teeth and was just using the mouthwash when I felt something odd in my mouth. I quickly realized a filling had come loose. I spit it out in the sink and suddenly I was burning up, my ears were ringing, breath would not come...

Fade to black.

And then Mr. Kaos was calling my name and lifting me off the pleasantly cool tile floor.

As much as I hated that flood of panic and the clouded hour of trembling that followed, I have to imagine it was worse for Mr. Kaos to hear the thud of my body crumpling to the floor, to find me unconscious, to see me curled up in a state of panic unwilling or unable to answer even the simplest of queries.

Apparently? I don't deal well with dental issues... keep your fingers crossed that I don't hurt the dentist next Monday when he goes to fix what's broken...