museum of flight

Compliments of SPEEA, Shaner's union at Boeing, Saturday was free admission to the Museum of Flight in south Seattle. We thought it would be super fun to take Wesley. Shane and I went a couple years ago, but it was even cooler this time. There was more stuff, plus, it was fun to see things through Wesley's eyes.

So, a photo essay of our Saturday:

There was a lot of checking out planes hanging from the ceiling...


And toddling through the exhibits...


And sometimes taking a break and blocking traffic (because we were tired)...


I especially liked the new exhibit on Amelia Earhart. It was super cool to read about this woman who did daring scientific things in a day and age when women were just supposed to be refined and pretty. She amazes me, and I was humbled to learn more about her story.

I also liked putting Wesley in a spacesuit...


And a cockpit...


And the kids' exploration area. Here, he is opening and closing drawers that show the kinds of things needed to make an airplane. Oh gee, he does that with the cabinets in the bathroom at home...



There also was this teeny plane the kids could jump in and control. Wesley was having fun with this rudder, but the big secret is that the kid in the cockpit was the one actually making it move...


Then he decided to climb the stairs -- but the kid in the cockpit wasn't ready to be done. Lucky for him, Wesley only really wanted to climb the stairs...


Then, we ventured over the T. Evans Wyckoff Memorial Bridge (brand spanking new and structurally engineered by my awesome company) to the Concorde exhibit -- which Shane and I didn't get to see last time we were here...


The Concorde was cool. It was SUPER CRAMPED up there since they put these huge plastic bubbles over the seats so you couldn't touch anything. I definitely felt like a wide load going through those aisles! I also didn't get a picture of it, but the plane had a very cool super pointed nose...

And! To my super surprise, they had an Air Force One!! They've had it since 1996 but I guess I missed that memo, and enjoyed the surprise nonetheless. It was an AF1 for Eisenhower, JFK, Lyndon Johnson, and for a short while, Nixon. VERY COOL; we had to wait in a line to get up in it, but I was glad we did (I realize I look like a big dork here, but I was excited!)...

We saw some super hot 1960s technology and one of the presidential meeting spaces, as well as bathrooms just as small as those on airplanes today (so I guess the prez doesn't get any special treatment in THAT area)...

But overall, the best part of the day was wandering around a cool airplane museum as a family...


What a fun Saturday!

out of control

Monday was an awful day. I’ve had a lot of awful days lately! Thanks goodness Tuesday and Wednesday were normal, and today seems like it’ll be a fine day, although Wesley is sick and I'm home from work.

I’m really struggling with one particular issue lately: control.

I’ve always believed that if I wanted something bad enough, I could achieve it. I don’t think that’s a bad thing to believe per se, but lately, things haven’t been turning out as I’ve liked, and instead of dealing with failure in a healthy way, I am freaking out and stressing out.

I suppose I take things very personally. I believe I can do it, but if something happens to prevent me from doing whatever “it” is, then I fall short as a person – and that’s unacceptable to me. I want to be my own definition of Super Woman.

Whimsy just recently held what I thought was a very successful online book club. We were discussing a character that I felt was particularly bratty. She had quit her PhD program, was living with her parents, and complained about everything. She was an ultra-teenager, except in her 20s. I thought that was particularly lame, and made my feelings known. Another participant got sort of mad at me – “she’s only human!” she said, as if somehow that excused her from being a brat and I was insensitive for demanding so much from the character in the book (and people in general).

And myself, I realized later. I don’t want to be “human.” I want to be better than that. I want to always been striving and growing and learning and progressing, and when I fall short, it hurts. Backtracking is counterproductive.

So all this relates back to my control over my life, and how I handle things when it doesn’t work out. Here’s my sad story.

I had to work on Monday, and I had a doctor’s appointment at 2:30 pm. My company has cars you can borrow for appointments and such, but I found out over the weekend they were all booked. Shane got into a fender-bender icky accident on Friday, so our car was on the verge of expiration. Since I needed to drive to work (no bus goes to my doctor’s office and a taxi would have been too expensive), Shane made me take the car in for a damage estimate first thing Monday. They deemed the car un-driveable, and hooked me up with a rental. When I got downtown, I pulled into a parking garage across the street from my work, and learned to park for 5 hours would cost $22. Whoa. I pulled right out the other side. I went to my “usual” parking garage, which was $11, but much farther away. I was super late to work.

A 2 pm, I left work for the garage. When I got to the elevator to take me to my car, I realized I didn’t have the parking ticket with me. Anyone who loses a ticket pays the maximum – something like $25-$30 for a typical garage. I called my boss, who confirmed it was on my desk. It was now 2:10. I ran 4 to 5 blocks in downtown Seattle back to the office. I went up 32 flights in the elevator, got my ticket, then back down, then ran the 4 to 5 blocks again. I got to the freeway at 2:30. I called my doctor’s office, who told me I need to be there by 2:45 or they had to cancel my appointment. OK, I’ll do my best. I drove as safely as I could, parked, ran to the office, and made it at 2:43 or something. Record time. Thank goodness traffic wasn’t bad.

Then, here’s the kicker. They took my blood pressure right away. HA! YEAH RIGHT. And my doctor came in, told me my blood pressure was really high, and said, “I realize today was a tough day for you, but you’ve really got to calm down.”

Are you kidding me?? Of COURSE my blood pressure is going to be high! I just ran for 20 minutes! I was told I HAD to get here by a certain time or I owed $50! And you're telling me to CALM DOWN? I was speechless.

I think the thing that bugs me the most about all this is that after the day was over, I could look back in retrospect and see all these ways things could have been easier (this happens a lot, right?). For example, I found out at work that a car WAS available because a guy was finished with it earlier than he expected (meaning I could have avoided this altogether). Or, I could have just parked in the $22 garage since paying extra money would have been certainly preferable to the headache I endured running back and forth. Or, maybe I should have just paid the maximum garage fee, since it would have been cheaper than a $50 missed-appointment fee, which I almost had to pay.

I just have a hard time weighing all these options and realizing that I can't control everything -- I can't demand perfection from myself, even though I feel like things should be perfect if I'm doing it right. Not too long ago I finished Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and it was a good book. She deals a lot with her control issues; she is a lot like me. I feel educated and capable, and I should be able to accomplish whatever I want for myself. So when things don’t turn out as planned, I like to blame someone else since it can’t possibly be my fault, right? But when it is my fault (the stupid parking pass was on my desk!), I then have to deal with failure, and like Monday, all I want to do is crawl into a hole and cry.

I told Shane about this, because at first I thought my doctor (“you really need to calm down”) was just being overdramatic. My life is great. And Shane said, very graciously, “I don’t want this to come out the wrong way, but I think you get stressed out a lot.”

I had to think about it. Really? And I guess he’s right… I want things to be as planned, perfect, under my control.

So – now that you’ve made it to the end of my sad story – what do you do when things don't go as planned? Can you accept that you’re not perfect and deal with it? Does that make you feel like you’re lowering your standards for yourself? Or do you have to have a good cry? Or do you freak out and throw things? I recently got a yoga DVD since I really think I need to chill out and maybe it’ll help. But I’m so used to being go-go-go, I don’t know how to make the change.

It’s a hard concept to deal with. I want to feel like I am an agent unto myself, but it’s not always the case. We’re acted upon as much as we act, and in both cases, good and bad happens. I guess it’s all about being satisfied with the mixture of the two, and seeing how it makes life interesting. I’m working on it.

super saturday

OK okokokokok you know, I've never posted twice on the same day, but I'm going to today. Since I'm really not in that bad of a mood! I did something super exciting this morning!! And I totally want to tell you all about it. (I'm happy and positive!)

It was Super Saturday at Church; if you don't know what that is, then you're missing out! It's basically a huge craft day. The people in charge pick the crafts ahead of time, then you sign up for what you want to do. I saw this craft as a gift at a baby shower, and we begged the gal who made it to do a class. She modified it a bit, but overall it's SO AWESOME and I LOVE IT and I'm SUPER EXCITED about it.

It's a Jesus Book for children. I've actually wanted to do something like this since I read about this awesome project Stacey did. (I may even still make one of those one of these days.) Anyway, for my project, I had to pick up my own pack of 12 Jesus pictures, and the gal doing the class got us the paper and book.


(That's my cover.)

The sample books she made had a lot of flowers and pink in the paper, so I requested in the hall at Church one day that if she found some blue, I'd love that even better (my son is a boy after all). A couple weeks later, she told me she found me so blue, and boy was I thrilled. I was even more thrilled when it was all in front of me and I got to work on it.

It was no ordinary project! I had 12 Jesus images, 9 Jesus "titles," 12 "printed" papers, and 6 "accent" papers. It was a matter of mixing and matching what title went with what image, what image went best with what print, what accent went best with the image and the print. Then, I had to design each of my pages: where does the title go? Where do the accent strips go? Where does the image go? Vertical or horizontal? In the end, it turned out just so cool.

This is the first page... the colors just go so well together! Here are a few of my other pages...

See, check out how cool this is. The paper, although blue, had some weird yellow-goldish stuff going on in the corners, which totally went with the sunset background on the image. Awesome.

You can't see it so well, but Jesus is holding a teeny little purple butterfly in this image. I love how the background paper has all those colors, and the three strips kind of bring out the colors of the garden in the image, especially the red.

The red is the money strip here too; you can't really see, but the little boy is holding a twig of berries that are red, so that strip helps the berries to pop out. The colors match and augment each other so well.

This one is hilarious because it's probably my most favorite picture of Jesus (him feeding the little birds), yet the printed paper in the background is the weirdest -- it is a bunch of blue elephants! But when I put it all together, it just looked so awesome. The two accents colors are fabulous.

She provided scriptures that went opposite each of the images. I can't wait to bring this to Church for Wesley to see tomorrow and forever. Have I mentioned how I'm counting down the seconds until he goes into Nursery Thanksgiving weekend? Right now I have to entertain him for 3 hours of Church. After Thanksgiving, I entertain him for one hour and then ship him off to the nursery. You guys have fun with him! He's a handful. I just love him.

Dang, I had such fun doing this. It really made me think artistically for an hour or two! It felt good to make such a cool book about such an amazing subject for such a sweet little boy. Yay for Super Saturdays and Jesus and baby Wesley!

pet peeve of the day

Today's pet peeve:

Since I'm trying to be a sensible, healthy woman, I make an exciting large dinner (or buy an exciting large pepperoni pizza), and then I limit my portion sizes, but sit there and watch my other table-mates, who shall remain nameless but can probably be guessed, eat lots and lots and lots. Then, before I even have a chance to enjoy the leftovers the next day (if there are any), said table-mate has already eaten them! Are. You. Kidding. Me? It's really not fair.

And, just for kicks, my all-time pet peeve:

I dislike it much when people geographically refer to their intended destinations incorrectly. If you are in Washington, you go down to Arizona. If you are in Utah, you go up to Idaho. If you are in Maryland, you go down to Florida. For lateral moves, I prefer to use "over to" instead of "up" or "down." One could argue geographic elevation changes constitute an "up" instead of a "down," but I'd argue otherwise.

Now, I need to go drink some positivity-juice or something so I don't turn into a 100% class-act complainer. I just really wanted that leftover pizza, is all. sigh

let me count the ways

All the reasons today was an awful day:

• It rained a lot.
• Traffic was awful.
• My bus this morning hit a sign on the freeway, obliterating the sign and cracking the bus's windshield. I had to fill out a "accident witness" form and catch another bus in the rain.
• Shane and Wesley got in an accident. A guy towing a car slid into them.
• My car's rear passenger fender is totally crumpled (our second accident in a year for anyone keeping score at home).
• They were on their way to a speech therapist appointment for Wesley, and the office called me at work to see if I knew where they were, since they were really late. Of course I immediately start freaking out. (For good reason, apparently.)
  
• Shane was on the phone this afternoon with the insurance people for two hours.
• Wesley refused to take a nap.
• Wesley finally fell asleep like two hours later and Shane didn't have time to do all the stuff he needed to do before close of business.
• I tried to help by getting on a bus and going home from work early.
• But it was still raining.
• And traffic was still awful.
• And the bus was really really late.
• In fact, when I got to the busy bus stop and started talking to people, they said they hadn't seen a single bus in 30 minutes, and their bus was at least 40 minutes late. (And sadly, they were still waiting when my bus finally came.)
• The bus was packed to the gills and standing room only.
• I exercised yesterday for the first time in a week and today every muscle in my body hurts.
• I've been working all week and I'm really really tired. I just want to collapse.

Can you believe this?

On a happier note, I had Seattle's Best Coffee Cocoa Trio today (with whipped cream, the best in the business) and Little Caesar's for dinner. A Little Caesar's just opened up super close to us and dangit I wanted it today. I think it's bad to drown my worries in hot chocolate and pizza but for today I don't care.

I hope your day was better!

just for grandma...

Grandma Twining has been bugging me for some recent Wesley videos, so here are a couple cute ones. (Please note it takes me HOURS to load these things. You guys, too?) Just wait until Halloween and I get him toddling in his costume. You'll be laughing for hours!

Here, Wesley is enjoying spinning dad around with our swivel office chair. Notice his totally awesome Mr. Incredible pajamas!



Dad has recently discovered that Wesley loves to do flips. Lots of flips. And the kid doesn't get dizzy, imagine that.



Whenever we say "good boy!" or "good job!" or anything really positive, Wesley stops whatever he is doing and claps. It's like he's physically bound to the act of clapping when there's positivity all around him. So, in this video, we're watching one of the president's speeches (I don't think myself or Shane were particularly impressed with this speech), and every time Congress clapped, Wesley had to join in....



Shane heard a funny sound once as Wesley was "winding up" from his nap... he walked into his room and discovered him doing this. Hilarious!



This last one I just took today... he was having a good old time with, yes, my keys. I just love his laugh; it's music to my ears. I hope he laughs like that his whole life.



There you go Grandma! Wesley loves you and misses you!

an analogy about peace and progress

According to Geir Lundestad, secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, it is a myth that the prize is awarded to recognize efforts for peace after they have proven successful; "more often, the prize is awarded to encourage those who receive it to see the effort through, sometimes at critical moments."

This to me, seems like giving a building an award for being a magnificent structure while it is still under construction. Anything could happen between any given day during construction and the grand opening, and to call something "Building of the Year" before it is done seems completely presumptuous.

I'm not saying anything about Obama being awarded the Prize and whether he's peaceful or not (there are many arguments for all sorts of sides to that argument, and I'm not qualified to talk about it), but I am saying that I never realized the rationale behind the award itself seems a bit flawed. We're just awarding someone a big fancy award to encourage them to "keep on keeping on?" Who else gets awards for stuff like that? A "you're doing a nice job so far and we're 100% convinced you're not going to screw it up between now and then" award?

(I know there are building awards for "On the Boards" building projects, but those awards openly recognize a project "in design" and not for any merits as a future completed structure!)

Your thoughts?

trying something a little bit different

Friends, October is going to be a wild and crazy month for the Gottula home. Let me preface with a quick recap of my professional life as of late:

I am a part-timer (former full-timer) at my firm. I am in the office Fridays only, and I log on at home when I can. My department includes my boss, one full-timer, and another part-timer. Well. The full-timer quit, the other part-timer is starting art school and is cutting her hours even more, and my boss is going crazy. She finally hired another person, who started 5 minutes ago, so....

I decided to offer my services to come into work full-time for October!

So, starting tomorrow morning, bright and early, I am taking Wesley to a friend's, and she'll watch him for four days, for four weeks, and Shane will watch him on Fridays. I'm dressing up, taking the bus, getting hot chocolate at Seattle's Best Coffee (truly the best!), walking on my lunch break, clocking my time, going to meetings, etc.! I'm a downtown working woman again for four whole weeks.

How do I feel? Equal parts nervous, scared, excited:

• Nervous about leaving Wesley for so long. I'm not nervous about working, since working is like getting back on a bike -- it all comes back so easily. No, I'm not nervous about working. I'm nervous about how he will adjust to the schedule and being with someone else.Will he miss me? Will he not miss me?
  
• Scared about how it will feel to be away from him so much. Even now, when I work just one day a week, sometimes I physically ache for him. I just miss the smell of his hair or the sparkle in his eye or the feel of his hug. He is part of me, I love him! He's also at the cusp of talking, and I'm scared I'm going to miss like 20 vocabulary words developing in four weeks. It's totally doubtful that will happen, but it's a possibility!
  
• Excited to get to work and have fun with my friends! Excited to do some good for my company, excited to get to know the new guy, excited to jump on the bandwagon and enjoy the "good ole days" for awhile. I really love my job. I'm one lucky girl; I have fun, I get involved, I take it seriously, I enjoy myself.
  

Plus, who knows, I guess I like to feel needed! And if ever they needed me, it's now. So the goal is to get the new guy up to speed, then I can go back to playgroups and baby story time at the library and Mom & Me movies and the Alderwood Mall indoor playground (and sleeping in).

It's just four weeks, right? Here goes!