Where It All Started

Yeah, so, it's a little past Mother's Day, but we couldn't really go without posting anything about Mom, could we? She probably hasn't gotten nearly the coverage she deserves here, especially since she's such a big promoter of the blog. Did you know she prints out and distributes pages all around the Skagit Valley? I guess it's the modern equivalent of the wallet full of snapshots.

But Mom is an interesting person herself, from the childhood on a ranch in Southern California, to the days with Marjie and Ross in San Francisco in the 60's to her current life in LaConner as artist, real estate agent and newly-minted Veronica Mars fan. When I saw that the reporter who wrote the story on mom's house for a Seattle newspaper started the article by saying "Nothing ordinary about Breta Malcolm" I laughed out loud. Given that, it won't come as much of a surprise to anyone that the quote I remember most from my childhood (other than "No blood, no band-aid") was "Only boring people are bored." She has always loved a good field trip, fine art, interesting characters, and tasty food.

But it's easy to summarize my favorite thing about my mom - she's a person who looks for things to like in the world. And that kinda explains us too, doncha' think? All about the love! Yeah.

So Many Happy Birthdays

Heather, Eugene & Allison at E&A's wedding

Meet my brother-in-law, Eugene. You may have seen his photo on this blog before. For those of you who haven't had the good fortune to meet him in person, let's see what I can do to give you a mental picture of this man.

Ahem. Allison, brace yourself. No, I'm kidding. Here's the thing. People in Seattle, they tend to be pretty polite. Polite to the point of being uptight sometimes, polite to the point where it sometimes inhibits real connection.

Eugene doesn't have that problem. Eugene is out there. All the crudeness, all the potty humor, with the uncanny ability that you typically only find in young children, to ask those types of questions that are obvious, but that everyone else might choose to avoid. Like, asking a woman "Are you cold?", when certain, shall we say, anatomical evidence presents itself. This question might be followed by the comment "Damn girl! Turn those headlights down!". It's true. This could happen to you. Don't go for the soft-cup bra around Eugene.

And here's the truth that mom may not want to acknowledge about her baby daughter. Ali? She can be pretty crude too. For real. The fact is, Eugene cracks Ali up. Even when he's being gross. I can hear her laughing at him right now, that kind of laugh where she has a hard time getting her breath, and her brow wrinkles up a little like she's going to cry. Maybe she doesn't go for the headlight comment, but she will tell you about her food baby.

But Eugene's sweetness is also out there too. He's totally a softie. A foul-mouthed, sometimes smelly, Queens-accented sweetheart. He's a tender brute, and some of you might know that it's my firmly held belief that what every woman really wants is a tender brute. Eugene's tenderness is very obvious with my sister, who has never had a sweeter boyfriend. She did marry the right one. She knows it, he knows it, and no one has to pretend any different.

To me, it seems like a rare thing, two people loving each other equally. Usually all of us know that there's some imbalance in a relationship. I wouldn't claim that Allison and Eugene were always perfectly in balance, but they are now. They both wear the pants in the family, and neither of them pretend to be anything other than what they are. I've seen them argue in that loud, uncomfortable way that makes you wonder if you've suddenly become part of the furniture, and then be holding hands and grinning two minutes later. I like to think of them as a bomb-proof kind of couple. I hope the years will prove me right.

Their wedding... oh, you should have been at their wedding. We made a lot of jokes about Allison being Bridezilla, because you would not believe the level of detail that went into the planning of that event. It seemed like there was no possible way that Allison was going to be the serene bride, because there were so many things that could have gone wrong. Amazingly, she was. Look at the photo above, you can see it in her smile. She was a happy, happy bride.

But the great thing about the wedding was that while it was just as elegant as it looks in the classy photo above, it was also as ridiculos as it looks in the photo below. Someone is dropping F-bombs on the shuttle while he sits next to someone's mom, Glenn's probably getting left behind because he's making out with someone in the bushes, and you can see me on the left with the ever-present Polaroid. We got some good Polaroids that night. It was, hands-down, the most fun wedding I have ever been to. Oh, how I misbehaved. That's always a sign that I'm having a good time. Benevolent misbehavior. But that's another entry...

Back to Eugene. He gets credit for making my sister so happy that nothing could go wrong for her on her wedding day. He also get credit for being level-headed, no-nonsense and loyal as they come. Over the past few years, I've come to think of Eugene as one of the many benefits of being part of my family. There will be no boring holidays with Eugene in town. Furthermore, things will get done. Lightbulbs changed, etc. Hey Euge, maybe you could hang some pictures at my place when you're there for Thanksgiving?

Eugene, if I haven't said it before, I love you like a brother. We're lucky to have you as a part of the family, and my sister is lucky to have you as a husband. I can think of few better couples. As I said at your wedding, you two are the same kind of nerd.

And if anyone doubts that at all, just check out that pic of them in the Star Trek get-ups.

Happy Birthday, Eugene. Looking forward to having you around for many more.

More Love for the Coffee Shop

This post is one of those posts that has been rattling around in my brain for a while now. I took the photo back in August, I think it was the weekend Nate visited. We went into Fiore for coffee, and Shack and Andy were working so I snuck a picture of them.

We'll start off with a little secret - this isn't the first time Andy appeared in the pages of this blog. There are a few other minor mentions here and there, just like there are not two but three photos of Bobby, if you know where to look. As long you know that secret, we might as well just get the rest out on the table right now - like how I try not to think about how sad it would be if I came back from CO and any one of the baristas I love was gone, how I loooove my coffee shop, and how I actually consider it My Coffee Shop and am not embarrassed to admit that.

I think there’s a lot to love about the place. There's the fact that it really is gorgeous inside, well taken-care of and comfortable and the art is often very good, and of course the coffee is good. But my love for Fiore, it's not because of the furniture or the art or even the coffee. All of that stuff? Well, maybe the way it looks and the nice art make you feel like you are justified to be paying more for a latte there than you might somewhere else. Kind of like shopping at Barneys. But that's another story.

Really, all the trappings do is let you walk into the coffee shop comfortably the first time – they won’t be the reason you decide you are perfectly happy to go back there every single day. That part is about the people.

My real love for that coffee shop started with Andy, Shack and Bobby. How could it not? Those three have charisma.

Right off the bat, I just have to apologize to Shack for this post. I am really not trying to make those two be any more fond of themselves than they already are. Andy and Bobby know they are cute, they know that we know they are cute, etc. And I'm sure there are moments when that might get a little old for her, and no doubt, if she reads this, then the part of her that sees them as little brothers will be going "Oh please." or even "Eyew" right about now.

But I know that Shack also knows how baristas in Seattle are sometimes the equivalent of bartenders in other cities, and with these boys, that is going to manifest itself in the form of girls fawning over them, men wanting to run with them etc etc. And we all just have to live with that, since it's really the natural order of things and anyway, it is sort-of entertaining, isn’t it? I think so. Anyway, she can't fool me, I know that she’s got her own brand of celebrity as well. It's just not always as obvious. I suspect she is a woman who doesn't care to be obvious, most of the time.

Which is one of the reasons why, of the three of them, Andy is probably going to be the one you notice first. He just puts himself out there that way. Gregarious is certainly a word that comes to mind. Not to mention tall, and then there's that smile that I have described in the past as "blinding", and I mean that in the best possible way, and yes, he is good-looking. And I don't even usually like blondes. For Andy, I will make an exception. So would you.

One of my girlfriends who shall remain nameless said that when she first went into Fiore, she had a hard time forming the words when Andy asked her what she wanted to drink. I've seen it happen to other women as well. Strong women, older women, you name it. Sometimes, Andy smiles at them and they just go all stupid.

Okay, but in case you start to think he's some kind of statuesque-Trojan-prince-like boy who could cause even the goddesses to argue amongst themselves, well… I’m sorry, but he kind-of is. Or at least, as close to that as you're going to find these days. However, Andy is also... I don't know how else to say this, but... sort-of goofy. And frankly, I thank god for that, because he might be intolerable if he wasn't. The goofiness and the apparent sweetness? In my opinion, they are the true keys to his charm, the things that make all the rest of him so appealing even after you've seen him several days a week for a year. And Allison, he shares your birthday. This might explain the goofiness.

He’s cute in a very obvious way, and friendly, asks you what's new, tells you a little about what he's been up to. People like that. He comes across as genuine. And after you've been going to the coffee shop for a little while, you feel like you sort-of know Andy. At least, you know enough to say some things about how nice he is, you know about the basketball, and maybe he’s mentioned his girlfriend to you a couple times, and it isn't very long before he doesn't seem like a stranger any more. Having said that, I have no doubt that there is a lot more to him than I know about. It's just that it's nice to know him the way I do, in this everyday kind of way, where he smiles at me every time I see him and I smile back and am always glad to see him, no matter what else is going on in my world. Back in April, that was a very valuable thing.

Shack? She has a very different kind of charisma. She has the kind of charisma that makes you curious about a person, but that keeps you from being sure you could get away with asking anything. Truth be told, I could have written a post about Andy months ago, because I have known for quite a while what I would say in praise of him. I also know what I love about Shack, but the thing about her is that I know I don't know her. So writing about her seems a bit presumptuous of me. Forgive me while I finally risk it anyway.

If you asked me to guess who at the coffee shop knew my name first, I wouldn't hesitate before saying Shack. I know for sure that she was the one who noticed that every time I got my latte, I added a sugar to it, and who came up with the innovation of putting the sugar in the shot before the milk was added. She was also the one who trained Andy to do the same thing.

Just to be clear, I don't really care all that much whether I put the sugar in, or they do. But I like that Shack noticed, and I suspect she knows that, and I also suspect that she knows that I don't really care that much about whether the sugar is put in or not. The point is, we all like to be noticed, even in our smallest interactions, and as a barista, Shack gets that. Shack’s way of being a barista isn’t about her, it’s about you.

Which is probably why when she’s at work, she isn’t the kind of person who would ever make anyone more stupid than they already were. This means that when Shack works with Andy, it has a sort of balancing effect. With her there, I am less likely to leave my keys by the napkins or, you know, drive away with the latte on the roof of the car, or maybe, send anyone a text message that says “You boys are so cute”, which will then be answered by something like “Tell us something we didn’t already know”, which will leave me rolling my eyes. Not that I’ve done any of those things. I haven’t. That was Susan’s glasses case, and I didn’t put it there.

Actually, no, really, I never have left a latte on top of my car. Are you kidding? I’d sooner leave a baby there. No offense to babies.

But like I said, the fact that I am always delighted when I see Shack does not mean that I feel I know her at all. I'm sure it's not an accident that Shack is almost always wearing both a hat and glasses and often an item of clothing that is either camoflauge or black. She's in cognito, undercover. Even so, she can’t hide that great red hair, her wry sense of humor, her outstanding laugh, or the general impression she gives you that she would be the kind of person who would have your back in a pinch. Maybe I’m wrong, but she sure seems that way from a distance.

Of course, one thing I can say for sure is that she makes a mean latte.

Now I can only hope that she will be flattered enough by this post to not kill me for publishing it. Don’t worry, Shack, no one really reads this blog anyway. Seriously.

What pleases me when nothing pleases me

Well, one thing that pleases me when I am in NO MOOD TO BE PLEASED! is a wee Keene-Marsh baby. What's the name? I'm so sad, she asked me for good name ideas and I never weighed in. There are so many boy names I like. I won't go into any of them right now though, since they might give something away.

Another thing that pleases me is this. It's true.

But the thing I was originally thinking of is my friendship with Kirsten. Over the past 5 years, if you were to tally up all the hours I've spent with people, the person with the most frequent flyer miles would definitely be Kirsten.

When I first started working with her, she had a convertible. We would put the top down and cruise away from the office to pick up sandwiches from QFC and it entertained me to watch the other drivers check her out, this tall blonde in her red Cabriolet, wearing big sunglasses and looking like a woman to be reckoned with. She always had her toenails painted and her shoes frequently match her purse, but she also always had black and blue bruises up and down her forearms from sparring at Tae Kwan Do. She has her black belt and we used to say that if anyone messed with me, she'd kick some ass. She's a powerful woman.

She's a softie too, though, and I will continue to make it my personal challenge to make her eyes well up from time to time by telling her how great she is. She is so great - empathetic, thoughtful, tough, and fun.

We used to go to the gym together at lunch, and it was a toss-up which one of us was the worse influence on the other, since neither of us really wanted to work out. We preferred Jamocha shakes at Arby's. There was a 6-month period of time when I was single though, and telling her all about my dating exploits was entertaining enough to convince me to do sit-ups. For me, at least. I loved her as an audience then, and I still do.

One of the best things about having dinner with her last night was the moment when she threw her head back and laughed laughed laughed at something I said. At least once a day, I would hear her laugh through the wall my office shared with hers, and I loved that and miss it and on those days when nothing pleases me, I know that laugh still will.

Wait wait wait!

I'm still trying to catch up to the Continental email from a few days ago. Luckily, the picture I was thinking I would post is actually in the same vein as your baby post today.

Check it out - Manitoba, subject of the Page Six link from the other day, and his son, Minitoba (aka Jake, a fighter's name, of course).

So, the Continental is going under? Well, in the 90s that was definitely the East Village bar that, in my opinion, had the bleakest aura. It was a bit better when Todd Youth was there, bartending or keeping an eye on the door, wearing his white creepers and seeming like he was the kind of guy who would keep an eye out for you, which he did for me one night when the frat guys got a little too close for his comfort. But generally, it was a railroad flat of a bar, dark and grimy, and the kind of place you would only go right when the band was going on, never before, never just to drink. Unless you were broke and someone was slipping you freebies.

I used to go in to the Continental to bring the bar manager cat food. He was Pauly's roommate, and a mess of a guy, barely coherent most of the time, even though somehow people knew he was smart, or used to be. He kept a kitten at the apartment for a while, and it was pitifully small, so I would bring these cans of cat food for him, since I didn't trust this guy to feed the cat. Then one day the cat was gone. I never knew what happened to it. Pauly refused to pet the cat, or like it because he said "It's just going to be gone soon anyway." And he was right.

The best thing that I can say about that particular bar manager is that he led to one of my favorite NY stories - the time I walked through Pauly's living room at 2AM and much to my surprise found Joey Ramone parked on the couch.

But your post, and the link to Page Six, and some other recent events in my life, have left me thinking about Richard, who I hope will not sue me for posting this. If anyone was going to sue me for posting about them, it would probably be Richard, since if we were having a "Heather's Most Famous Ex-Boyfriend" contest, he would win, hands-down. Dictators? Manitoba's? And I guess recently, sometimes, MC5. In 2004, when the lead singer for Guided By Voices asked the crowd at Bowery Ballroom who the last good NYC Mayor was, the answer he liked was "Handsome Dick Manitoba!"

But Richard didn't start out famous to me, even though he'd been famous to the East Village for decades. When I met him, he was one of the downstairs bartenders at 2A. Richard was the guy who made Whiskey Sours from scratch, such good, good Whiskey Sours. So, it's ironic that I've always sort-of thought of him as the guy who saved me from the Betty.

Richard came along at a time when I was spending too much time on bar stools, drinking too much whiskey, and failing to toughen up even though I was frequenting some places that really called for that. I think hanging out with all the tough guys only made me more tender by contrast. Before Richard, I loved Pauly, who had reached a point in his life where he thought it made sense to be the kind of guy who smoked even in the shower. Then there was Darren, who said "I never argue. I never argue, because I'll only argue when I'm right, and if I'm right, the argument's over" and meant it.

So Richard, it turned out, was a relief. He was a bartender, but a sober bartender, and in general, irrepressibly good humored, even when he had every reason not to be. He was kind and paid attention, and loved good food and wrestling. Pro-wrestling, people. And he was the only person who I EVER saw have the pull with Rizzo to get in to Green Door free (and he was plus at least two, since I know you were with us, Ali).

Some things I remember:
- Most of the time when he saw me come in to the bar, he would say "Heather WEIN-traub!", a reference to Mean Streets. He loved Scorcese.
- One night we were going out, and I wore something a little more bare than was my habit, and he looked at me and said "Are you trying to get me into a fight?"
- Eating at the old Odessa, where he knew all the waitresses, before they renovated it and made it so damn bright you could have done surgery in there
- He used to work the door at Niagara (which was called something else in those days) and I thought he looked cute all bundled up in his leather jacket with a hoody AND a hat.

So, even though he wasn't famous to me, I loved Richard, and I still feel some gratitude to him for showing me that the East Village could be a different kind of place. One where a sober bartender could also be a punk-rock, bar-owning, east-village-ruling celebrity, the kind who cares about being loyal to his friends and is good to his girl. But the guy I loved was always much more Richard than Handsome Dick Manitoba.

In spite of that, I would be lying if I didn't admit that it was fun when Jason (who still holds the title of the man with the most astounding record collection I have ever seen) said to me "You realize you are dating a punk-rock legend, don't you?"

I didn't really at the time, but it sure seems a whole lot more clear now. To me he was a good guy who helped make it clear to me that maybe it was time for me to change what I had been thinking of as my New York Ways. And I did.

Hey, Ali, how could you forget The Ex-Husbands? But that's a whole other story...

XOXO HM

What I End Up Writing When I Should Be Writing For a Manuscript Submission

I should have taken a picture of Nate’s shoes. Or of just the frayed button placket on the shirt he was wearing.

Nate is the kind of guy who, if you try to take a picture of him, stops doing whatever he was doing that made you want to take a picture in the first place. He’ll turn his head, or straighten up to face the camera, maybe try a smile, like he doesn’t know what you want to see through the camera lens, or what you were seeing before you lifted the viewfinder to your eye.

So, I think of these little visual details, and I imagine I could have gotten more intimate pictures of him through those things than I got when I took a picture of him directly. If I had trained a camera on his shoe, he woud have just let me take the picture. Maybe he would have laughed, or asked me what was doing. I can’t say for sure, though, he’s a mystery to me.

I, on the other hand, am no mystery when I’m around Nate. I go all talkative, almost as talkative as I was on Friday night with my girlfriends and a mojito.

Still, “when I’m around Nate” is a funny thing to say about a person who I hadn’t seen in a year until Saturday, and who I hadn’t spent much time with at all before that. It’s a phrase that conjures up some kind of intimacy that wouldn’t seem to make sense for the kind of minor characters Nate and I are in each other’s lives. But there are some funny things about intimacy – like how a few hours spent looking at someone’s button placket can create it, or how you can feel it with someone who is a mystery to you, someone you know you do not know. It happens when you let that person feel familiar to you anyway.

On Saturday, Nate rang the intercom to my apartment at 5:17 PM (according to my phone), and at 10:23 PM, I was back in my apartment on my own, checking the messages my phone had collected while I was out.

It felt like a long five hours, and I mean that in the best way. It was an adventurous 5 hours.

We started with coffee at Fiorre. Now, I know what you all are starting to think about me and that place, but he asked for coffee, he talked about how Seattle has such good coffee, all he wants to do is drink coffee when he’s here. Anyway, I like being in love with Fiorre. Summer is for being in love. Being in love and leaving the house with your hair wet and wearing sandals with your jeans and bikini tops under t-shirts, and summer is for eating outside, even if there are bees.

All of which I did on Saturday.

So, after Fiorre, we had dinner at Agua Verde, or rather, at the park next to Agua Verde, with the bees, where Nate saw a guy he doesn’t really know from Vancouver, and they talked about taking bike rides, and I looked at the guy’s old school brown sneakers, which he was wearing on a bike that had those tiny pedals that are meant for you to clip into. The five or ten minutes the guy was there and then especially the moment he rode his bike away felt like a scene from the movie “Slacker”.

But anyway, after all that, Nate said “Should we go to Seattle Center or wherever it is with the rides?” the way a boyfriend you’ve lived with for a while would say “Sh’we go to the grocery store?”, without even bothering to finish saying the word “should” at the beginning of the sentence. Only I was a whole lot happier than I would have been if he was suggesting we go to the grocery store. He knew I wanted to go on the rides because I sent him a text message the night before that, through some technological fluke, was delivered to him at 4AM.

We just watched the rides for a while before we finally got on one. The problem with watching the rides at Seattle Center is that only about half of them are being ridden at any given time. The attendant for the Orbiter sat in one of the ride’s grimy cars like he was grounded, kicking his legs out in front of him and slouching. There was a thorough purity to his boredom that I had not seen since high school trigonometry class. It was like he was sitting in a trig class that didn’t have a single hot chick worth lifting an eyelid for.

I loved it. Because sometimes summer is also for boredom.

After Nate and I actually rode the Orbiter, though, its attendant’s boredom seemed almost perverse. Here, right over his head, is one of the most intense kinesthetic experiences you can have on this earth. Or at least that’s how I felt about it when I tried to walk afterwards. Now, I know that it is not the most intense amusement park ride, and that people jump out of planes etc. But really, on any given day most of us are doing fairly ordinary things with our bodies. We get from here to there, maybe we get the heart rate up a little, exercising or what have you.

The Orbiter is just a different kind of reality from all that. The Orbiter reminds you that physics is no joke. It reminds you that gravity is mostly gentle with us earthlings, that centrifugal force does not have to handle us so tenderly, and yet, mostly, it does.

There was more to the evening than the Orbiter. There was an anemic attempt at skee ball, a game of dayglo air hockey that Nate won handily, and there was Nate looking for a kid to give our extra ride tickets.

Towards the end, we went up in the Space Needle. It’s different now, crowded, with the whole ground floor around the base turned into a donut of a gift shop, and just before you get in the elevator, they try to take your picture in front of a phony Seattle skyline, like you were at the prom. Still, I find the observation deck of the Space Needle an utterly satisfying place to be and I wished we could have stayed there long enough to really get bored.

One lasting effect of the night is that I have an annual pass to the Needle again, so next time it gets too hot on Queen Anne Hill, I say we all pile in the elevator and sit on the benches up top for a good long time. The old bar that made you feel like you were in an airport is gone, and while I mourn the loss of it, there’s a concession stand now, and I’m thinking maybe we can get some ice cream there instead.

Because of course, summer is for ice cream, and for going somewhere to look at the view, and for being in love with more of the world than usual, including cute boys wearing navy blue suede sneakers and $5 mirrored sunglasses. The kind of sunglasses that you try to see past your own reflection into, and sometimes can. But the sunglasses remind you that the boy with the brown eyes behind them is really seeking only a conversational mathematical intimacy that you can’t offer him. Still, I’m the kind of girl who can sympathize, and who knows how to love a guy just a little bit less than the amount that would make his girlfriend start to mind.

And that’s what I did on Saturday.

I picked a Winner!

Anyone who has ever spent time at a racetrack knows that Thoroughbreds are horses built for speed - their light frames and long elegant limbs, just a part of the evidence. Horse people also know them for their sensitive and spirited natures, and those of us lucky to have known a good one will tell you that we also love them for their big hearts and willing dispositions.

If Bobby were a Thoroughbred, his name would be Here Comes Trouble.

On Sunday he ran the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation race for the Seattle Genetics team. Now, maybe this race was a dropdown for him, but he didn't sulk, in spite of the fact that he led the field by a minute at the end.

If Bobby were a Thoroughbred, he'd be a 5 year old - too old for the Derby, still young enough to love speed as much as any 3 year old, still too young to safely be called bomb-proof. He may even be a little green still, but he has the kind of big brown eyes that would make a person call a good horse an old soul. Some horses are charmers, and Bobby would be one of those. You'd have to watch your ginger snaps.

If Bobby were a middle school heart-throb, he'd be a friendlier Ryan, messy brown hair and all, and his partner in crime at the coffee shop, Andy, would be a pretty 8th-grade Pete. They'd rule the school, without ever making you feel like maybe they knew it just a little too well.

If Bobby were a summer song, he wouldn't be the song you played at sunset. He might be the song the Mountain Dew people wished they had thought of for that commercial where every face has the bloom of youth and everyone is jumping off a wooden dock in to a warm summer lake with all the exuberance their perfect bodies can muster. Or maybe he would be the song you pick to start a long road trip, the one that takes you through city after city of people you can't wait to see.

Several times a week, he's the first person I smile at all day, and that gives a guy a special place in my heart. Then, when he raced and won on our behalf? Well... then I knew he deserved a love letter on the blog.

He topped it all off when he bought my latte today. He didn't have to do that. But that's a Thoroughbred for you.