Mukilteo Musings

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Heartbreaker

We just found out last night that one of my daughter's best friend's Dad died of malignant melanoma over the weekend. Yes, folks, even in the foggy rainy Pacific Northwest, people die of skin cancer. He was 54.

I just had a full body check at the dermatologist two weeks ago before I even knew this person was sick. I have several weird spots of different colors on my back and I just wanted them checked because I am fair skinned and blue eyed. My spots, though ugly, are benign but I had them burned off a week ago anyway.

As I type this with itchy oozy spots on my back, I urge all of you to get checked regularly and get checked for anything that looks different to you. It may save your life and WEAR SUNBLOCK if you must go out in the sun.

// posted by Janet @ 3:02 PM 0 comments

Sunday, August 29, 2004

Foggy morning today!! See all of the fishing boats out for salmon! This is taken toward Edmonds from our front deck (same as below) and the mountains have disappeared.
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// posted by Janet @ 9:48 AM 0 comments

Saturday, August 28, 2004

View of Olympic Mountains from the front deck of our house.
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// posted by Janet @ 10:53 AM 0 comments

Just a very familiar scene of Seattle traffic from I-5 heading south into Downtown Seattle!
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// posted by Janet @ 10:09 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Some More This and That

1. Seattle has been named in Forbes magazine as the number one most expensive city in the nation in which to live. I believe this though it seems to me that some cities in California have higher real estate prices. But if you take everything into account, I guess we win this dubious honor. While my Mom was visiting from Montana, she grabbed the receipt from the grocery clerk's hand when it went over $70. She couldn't believe our limited number of groceries went that high. It is tough here and wages do not match up.

2. Seattle is number 8 on a list of cities most difficult to navigate. We are behind LA, Boston, New York, and San Francisco. I think we should win this one, too. If you do not know where you are going in this city, you are doomed. You'll end up driving in circles in some industrial area between bodies of water and railroad tracks.

3. King 5 News (NBC) is the most watched in the 4 million people Seattle area---I guess, by far in the ratings. This does not surprise me. I love King 5. Jean Enerson is the main anchor; she's in her 50's; a Seattleite; and she has been on King 5 since we moved here 25 years ago. If they ever tried to replace her with a new younger person, Seattle would riot like you've never seen--worse than WTO. Jeff Renner, the meteorologist, was replaced a while back and Seattleites threw a major fit and they brought him back. I mean--come on--he was on when Mt. St. Helens blew. Don't mess with King 5!!

4. And finally, a picture of my peppers and tomatoes!! This is huge HUGE for me:
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// posted by Janet @ 10:33 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

End of Summer

The fog has returned this morning again. Clearly we head into fall. Yesterday we went to downtown Seattle to finish some school shopping and we found a little bit of France right here at home--Le Pichet. This little bistro offers a large number of French wines by the glass and a fabulous menu right off the streets of Lyon. I closed my eyes and there we were sitting in Old Lyon. The bill was even written up by the proprietor in the familiar French scrawl.

I will post some final summer photos. Both of these pictures are from the hike my son and I took to Lanham Lake. To repeat, in 1911, my Grandpa placed fur traps along Lanham Creek probably on up to the lake so it was strange to take the same path.

I have a terrible look on my face trying to avoid breathing in deer flies but I love our Northwest jungle just the same and so does my Apolo puppy. The other is Lucas on the edge of the lake.

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// posted by Janet @ 10:41 AM 0 comments

Monday, August 23, 2004

Now that I realize I can illustrate my posts--here is a picture of our old boat. We have owned it for 20 years and the kids have thrown up in it and so has the dog. We pull it with an old Chevy suburban we" inherited" when Dave's Dad died four years ago. The truck still smells like juicy fruit gum; Dave's Dad chewed juicy fruit for 40 years after he quit smoking.

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// posted by Janet @ 10:25 AM 0 comments

A Little Bit of This and A Little Bit of That

1. We returned to normal yesterday. Our long, warm and sunny summer returned to 60's and a chance of rain over the weekend. And it did rain. My kids were so happy. It is overcast now and a little misty. Last night when we walked Apolo, our damp smell had returned.

2. Because of our abnormally sunny summer, I have had luck with some tomatoes for the first time in my life!!

3. There were two big parties in the neighbohood over the weekend. One of them had people delivered and returned by limos so all evening we watched a black limo, a white limo, and a hummer limo go back and forth in front of our house. Our parking is limited. We had friends over for dinner that night and they have given us a bad time about moving away from them and down here by the water with the snobs. Watching the limo delivery system did not help. We tried to explain we are the white trash of the neighborhood because I do not have house cleaning help or a gardner and I never take our cars to the car wash.

4. The second party was a tropical event--the people had fake palm trees in their front courtyard. We actually felt snubbed we weren't invited to this one. It looked really fun--catered and everything. My binoculars revealed some of our other neighbors were invited and we'd invited these people to our Christmas party!! My husband accused me of losing our invitation but I'm sure we never got one. Hmmmph!! Maybe if I spent more time visiting with the classy people instead of hanging our with my computer or looking at them with binoculars....???? Alas, we are the white trash of the neighborhood!!

5. Dave and Lucas went fishing on Friday just out here in front of Edmonds and came home with salmon and crabs. We feasted all weekend on fresh seafood. Our fishing boat is really really old and crappy but we keep it at a storage unit like everyone else. However, we washed it off in our driveway and I joked with one of the neighbors that our boat is old but it works!! They caught no fish in their fancy boat and they were asking my husband for tips. Ah! Life in Mukilteo!!

// posted by Janet @ 8:23 AM 0 comments

Friday, August 20, 2004

My beautiful children performing Poulenc and Bach
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// posted by Janet @ 11:48 AM 0 comments

My beautiful children ready to perform at their cousin's wedding: Lucas/viola Kaley/piano

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// posted by Janet @ 8:41 AM 0 comments

Thursday, August 19, 2004

It is about time for some ONLY IN SEATTLE

1. Only in Seattle can you put your coins through the coin machine at the grocery store and without a percentage being charged, you can have it turned into a Starbucks card.

2. Only in Seattle where we have one of the highest boat ownerships in the nation if not the highest, is there a virtual parade of SUV's pulling boats on Friday nights from storage units to driveways for the weekend outings.

3. Only in Seattle where Jones Pop is bottled is it the latest rage among teen-agers to drink and get advice from the bottle cap's little message. Thank goodness they now have diet black cherry and diet root beer.

4. Only in Seattle when looking at what fish are legal to fish for and in what area crabbing is legal, do they refer to a shipwreck as a marker. There is an old shipwreck on the beach on the border of Mukilteo and Edmonds so "north of the shipwreck" you can fish for such 'n such and "south of the shipwreck", etc. Actually, if I remember correctly, there is a creepy guy who lives in a nearby shack and claims to own the shipwreck.

5. Only in Seattle from the Seattle waterfront and up through Mukilteo can you see the cruise ships head out to sea on Saturday night at about 5:30. There are three huge white monsters.

// posted by Janet @ 8:03 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

AND here is a picture of Kaley watching Apolo warm up in Calgary.
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// posted by Janet @ 8:03 AM 0 comments

Summer Olympics

I just can't seem to get into the summer games. Actually, I never really have watched them. I think it is because I grew up in a place where we all ice-skated, went sledding and skiied. The Winter Olympics are for me and always have been. As a matter of fact, my family and mostly me became huge fans of short track speedskating. Of course, the major short track star, Apolo Anton Ohno, is a Seattleite so it has been fun to follow his post Olympics skating pursuits. Kaley and I even went to Calgary, Alberta to watch a World Cup short track speedskating event last October. Here is a picture of Kaley and me taken by my friend Sonia!!
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// posted by Janet @ 7:50 AM 0 comments

Monday, August 16, 2004

Apolo as he is now--in front of our azaleas last spring (Puget Sound in the background)
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// posted by Janet @ 10:54 AM 0 comments

Apolo as a baby

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// posted by Janet @ 10:44 AM 0 comments

WOW!!

I do believe I'm getting the hang of this picture thing so now I'll be having pictures that illustrate my blog entries from the months past. Below is a picture of my family when we went to Iron Springs resort last January. As reported, we make an annual or more often trip to the Washinton coast and we have stayed at every place that allows dogs. We love the Hi-Tide resort at Moclips but aren't so fond of the Sandpiper but Iron Springs was right up there. I really liked the private cottages because our dog didn't bother anyone. We cannot stay at Ocean Crest Resort near Moclips and Iron Springs because of our dog but we always eat at their restaurant one evening of our stay.

// posted by Janet @ 8:55 AM 0 comments

My family at Iron Springs
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// posted by Janet @ 8:02 AM 0 comments

Sunday, August 15, 2004

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Friday, August 13, 2004

Two Cultures: Helena Part 3

I really am a product of two quite different cultures--my somewhat rural Montana childhood and my urban Seattle adulthood. I love both although I prefer Seattle. Both places have a significant outdoor component to the lifestyle which is why I easily melted into city life. I wouldn't like living in a city if I was not able to get to a trailhead within 45 minutes of my front door. Actually, it is kind of like I have everything I loved about Montana but more--more water; bigger trees; more diversity; more restaurants but minus the horrible winters.

One evening in Helena, we did a Montana thing. Kaley doesn't really like Montana so while she was at a musical with Grandma, Lucas, Dave and I headed for a Montana bar. We drove several miles out of Helena on pavement and then we turned on a dirt road and drove for 6 miles until we came to a ghost town in the mountains of nowhere. Marysville was a hopping place about a hundred years ago when its gold mine was producing a lot of ore. When production stopped, everybody left and today the old cabins, storefronts and abandoned lilac bushes remain. A bar, probably the original, is there called Marysville House and you will find some of the best food you've ever eaten in your life. The eatery pretty much looks the same as it did 30 years ago because it is an old abandoned building with a lot of initials carved into the walls. They added some old picnic tables in one room and the bar is in the second room.

People in Montana tend to be friendlier than here. There were two larger groups of people besides us and we chatted with each. One group was a wedding party from Portland returning to their beloved Montana to marry and they couldn't come back without eating at their favorite bar. Everybody had had more than enough to drink and my husband embarrassed me a little by teasingly asking the wedding group if they had a designated driver. They DID! Not long ago someone had been killed along this dirt road because of drinking and driving and my husband couldn't bear to think of such a tragedy happening to this group of beautiful young kids. Interestingly, minors are and always have been allowed in bars in Montana which is so convenient; we can order a drink while we wait for a table and our kids can be with us. Washington is very picky about this, unfortunately.

While we were at the Marysville House, a major thunderstorm hit with lightening causing the lights to flicker and a downpour that flooded in the front door. It added to the festive atmosphere. Lucas was standing at the door of the bar watching the storm (we get a LOT of drizzle in Seattle but thunderstorms of this magnitude are rare so my Seattle boy was thrilled). A friendly drunk queried Lucas about where he was from--Lukie's long hair and beard sans cowboy hat prompted the question. He grinned and responded Seattle but quickly added he was going to college in Missoula. The drunk apologized he'd always had trouble in school so that was why he lived in a ghost town and was in a bar in Marysville, Montana. We all tried to imagine life in Marysville--shudder.

Dave and Lucas had the best steaks perfectly cooked and I had sauteed shrimp in beer, gigantic and juicy. Sides were corn and beans and fabulous home baked bread and not a salad or even garnish of lettuce anywhere to be seen. The evening was.....well, FUN. Our van was covered with Montana mud which is still falling out of the wheel wells in my driveway.

And that's another thing: Montanans don't ever wash their bug, dust, and mud covered cars. Seattleites are fanatics about keeping their cars spotless. If you look in my garage, you can tell-----I'm from Montana.

// posted by Janet @ 9:15 PM 0 comments

http://www.bigskyfishing.com/Montana-Info/helena-pictures.shtm

Phooey, since my pictures don't work for anybody but me I thought I'd follow up on my entry below about Helena, Montana. The above link has some nice photos of the beautiful little city. Notice none of them are taken in the WINTER.

Also, I did some research on the haunted house that scared me as a child. This is from "Helena, Her Historic Homes" by Jean Baucus. Theodore H. Kleinschmidt, originally from Prussia, was the Assitant Cashier for the First National Bank in Helena and he built this home in 1892 for $112,000--a fortune at the time.

"The nineteen room 'gingerbread' house was built...[with] wood (cherry, oak, and birch)...imported from Germany....skillfully crafted the elaborate fireplace mantels, window frames, door frames, waiscoting and the lovely turned balustrade up the staircase. The third floor has a forty-two foot ballroom....

This home has the most elaborate roof line of any in Helena with its many gables, fancy balconies, and decorative windows."

See, my brother was right about the cherry wood (we knew what cherry wood was because our old piano was cherry) and the fancy staircase that impressed him as a child even if the place was falling apart. But try to imagine this house looming in the dark winter sky and being dilapidated and directly in the path of an 8 year old girl trying to get home home from her piano lesson. And this 8 year old girl was very close to her English Grandmother who told her ghost stories about London. Nope, I've never forgiven my Mom for making me walk those three long blocks.

// posted by Janet @ 8:49 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Helena, Montana--a Remarkable Little City

Helena!! When I say it, the word bursts with memories. You see I lived in Helena from the time I was three until I was 18. My Mom still lives there right at the base of Mt. Helena. If you take the poshness and resortiness out of Aspen and think of a "real" old gold mining town, you get Helena.

Helena's history is fascinating and I will always know more about it than Seattle. Gold was discovered there in the 1860's in a little creek that now runs under the crooked Main Street called Last Chance Gulch. The miners were about to give up and leave Montana territory when a swash of a gold pan delivered some good sized nuggets--hence the name "Last Chance Gulch". The rush was on and to this day the downtown buildings, still mostly orginal, have narrow fronts along the street but run deep to the alleys because they were built along the mining claims on the edge of the creek (pronounced "crik" in Montana). The money poured into this tiny town nestled in the Rocky Mountains on the edge of a big valley.

In the 1890's Helena had more millionaires per capita than any city in the nation. It rivaled San Francisco for its hipness. And everybody who was anybody built a mansion. Eventually, the gold became too expensive to extract and profits started to fall. Some of the rich people left. Usually, when that happened in Montana--ghost town--but after much corruption and political fighting, Helena became the capital city. Government and the businesses to support it are the lifeblood of this town to this day.

The most fascinating aspect of Helena (pop. 30,000) is that the Victorian mansions are still there--all over and in every neighborhood east to west. When I was a little girl most of them were in disrepair and since we had a large population of Roman Catholic families, they were filled with large families or turned into apartments. I wasn't lucky enough to live in one but oh did I get to play in them. My family's little house had actually been a log cabin in the backyard of one of these giants; it had siding and dry wall put on and rooms added so it was a relatively normal but quirky house with thick walls and a low ceiling. The main house had burned probably a hundred years before, the only remnant being a large granite block my Dad found in our garden and used as a back door step.

Immediately behind our house were three Victorian homes and across the street two more. I had friends who lived in them all and I have great memories of pretending to be a princess in the top floor ballrooms and playing "mother may I" on the servant's steps behind the kitchens. A block away loomed a gigantic ornate but dilapidated brick house with the carriage house and barn still part of the property. A boy named Billy lived there with his Grandmother. Billy's Grandma looked incredibly like a witch with long gray stringy hair. She acted like a witch, too, because the kids in the neighborhood loved to play in the old barn and she was always chasing us away. My brother was friends with Billy so he got to play in the main house and he came home with stories of cherry wood paneling and a fancy staircase. I was convinced the place was haunted; after all, a mean old lady lived there.

Unfortunately, the haunted mansion was between our little house and my piano teacher's house. In the dark Montana winters, my Mom forced me to walk home from my lessons up the hill past the horrible house. And little Janet with her overactive imagination would see all sorts of ghosts and hear screams and she'd barely make it home without wetting her pants after this long difficult scary uphill trek in the snow.

One day after school, for some reason, my friend and I (I am not proud of this) were being mean to a dweebie boy and we took his hat and threw it into a window of the broken down carriage house behind the haunted mansion. His parents told my parents and my punishment was to go up to the door of the haunted mansion and confess my crime face to face with the object of my fear: Billy's Grandmother. The required mission was to obtain the hat. Usually, these stories end with the surprise that the scary person was just a kind kid-loving jolly old Grandma who invites you in for cookies. Nope, she was even more ugly and terrifying close up; she allowed me to get the hat but she was even meaner than I imagined and yelled at me to stay off the property and oh my God, little Janet had to trudge by the place again on Monday night.

Of course, we visit Helena once or twice a year and traditionally, I drive my children by my old house where my Mom no longer lives. In the last twenty years, Helena has come back to life and the old mansions, thankfully, are being refurbished. Some of them have been turned into Bed & Breakfasts. The Witch and Billy's house is in the process of being redone and it is gorgeous; a historic plaque is placed in the front explaining the home's incredible story. No mention is made of a Witch or Billy who I think went to prison. The carriage house and barn are gone. And oh yes, my kids can't believe how short the distance is between my old house and my piano teacher's house--a mere three blocks.

// posted by Janet @ 8:06 AM 0 comments

Monday, August 02, 2004

Time for ONLY IN SEATTLE

1. Only in Seattle do we go to dinner to the newest hippest place according to my daughter called the "Lark" and see one of the former Mayors of Seattle eating there as well with his wife. Norm and Connie Rice were very popular and I wanted to get their autograph but thought that would disrupt their dinner. Wonderful food, by the way.

2. Only in Seattle do my children go to school with some of the relatives of the Nordstrom family (they do not have the same name). One particular girl from this family seems to be a victim of the fake n' bake phenomenon. Here where most everybody of the Caucasian persuasion is a pasty white, tan people stick out. If you are tan you are either from California or you visit a tanning salon. Some teen age girls go a little too often to the tanning salon and then bleach their hair too blonde and they become known as the fake n' bakes.

3. Only in Seattle would I know someone who worked for the Gates but not at Microsoft. She actually worked for Melinda Gates and helped manage the household personnel. My friend thought members of our investment club would really like Melinda but then.....oh yea....she doesn't really need to join a $30 a month investment club.

4. Only in Seattle where the social lines are blurred would I be friends with a member of one of the famous founding families of Seattle. In fact, this family started King 5 television. Wealthy and successful people in Seattle just don't act like they should be on Dynasty--nope--you cannot tell.

5. Only in Seattle where social lines are non-existent and where a list of the major individual political donors was in the newspaper would my husband comment that he has had lunch with most of these people. Of course, these very same people are very supportive of the University and every year they have a luncheon with scientists so they can chat about the newest developments.

// posted by Janet @ 3:21 PM 0 comments