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Family Outings

How to Show Your Guests a Good Time – Portland Style

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Perhaps you have important guests coming in from out of town?  Your husband’s beloved grandfather (Papa) and uncle who’ve never been to Portland?  I can help!

Your guests will be tired from travel. But not so tired that they don’t immediately notice that your front yard is full of dog crap. Quickly steer them into the house.  The first thing to do is feed them, of course. Just make sure the dishes you feed them on have that weird residue from the dishwasher.

After dinner, give them the tour of your quarter acre urban farm, being sure to stop in the basement to look at the piles of laundry and the smelly, yet adorable, baby chicks.  Then make them stand around outside in the rain looking at your chicken coop and overgrown lawn when all they really want to do is sit by the fire and talk to your four-year-old who they only get to see once a year. She will cooperate by burying her head in your chest and grunting whenever they address her. Once she warms up, she will deliver ear piercing  girl screams to show her affection. At this point, advise that hearing aides should be turned down.

Let your guests return to their hotel for some much needed rest. Your husband has a role to play here, too. After closing up the chicken coop for the night, he should decide that one of the chickens definitely needs to go into the vet, as her butt looks like those red-assed monkeys you can’t help staring at at the zoo. Make an appointment to drop her off in the morning, you can squeeze it in during the grand tour you are planning, it will just take a few minutes.

In the morning, instruct your husband to ready a large box to house your giant chicken for transport to the vet.  As you guests arrive, recruit one of them to take over cooking breakfast while you and your husband wrangle a 12 pound chicken into said box. Leave your husband to finish cooking and scurry off to the vet.

The vet’s office will instruct you to return for your chicken in two hours, so, take a wrong turn on the way home to add another twenty minutes to your already half hour return drive. Once you’re home, it’s time to being the tour of the Rose City! Pile into the car, passenger seat for Papa, of course. Your husband drives and you ride on the hump squeezed between uncle and large car seat.

Make a stop of your daughter’s school. Brilliant photo opportunity. Wow, it’s time to pick up the chicken already!

But when you get there, it won’t be. You will sit in the lobby, with guests, four-year-old and husband waiting in the car, for a ludicrously long time, while every bird keeper in Portland waits with you.

Because they are gracious and midwestern, your guests will forgive you. But God only knows what they must be thinking. Finally, after nearly an hour and half, the vet pulls you to an exam room to tell you that your chicken has lice and a mild uterine infection. You get to give her — a chicken who won’t come within 3 feet of you of her own volition — antibiotics twice a day for seven days.

But the monkey butt? Completely normal.

Fork over enough money to buy a flock of 30 baby chicks to treat a chicken who hates you and heft your box of poultry out to the car, wedging it into the space between the passenger seat and the back seat on the floor, your four-year-old’s legs resting atop it.

This is where you all break into giggles. There is a chicken in the car. At least there will be a story for your guests to tell their friends when they get back. Never mind that everyone in Minnesota will think you’ve become a hopeless west coast flake. Own it.

Now that you’re off to such an aupicious start, the rest will likely take care of itself. Make a stop at Powells Books, the International Rose Test Garden and the St. John’s Bridge. Your guests will be so relieved that they are no longer locked in a sedan with a sick chicken, they’re sure to fall in love with P-town.

Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival

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On Saturday, Nora and I went to the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival, or, the If Sue Could Make Her Own Festival This Would Be It Festival, as I now like to think of it.

It’s an enormous gathering of all things fiber arts related: sheep, goats, rabbits, alpaca, llama, spinning equipment, knitting equipment, fibers and yarn GALORE. And a ton of nice people who know just what you’re going through as you fondle and ogle all there is to see and try to decide what to take home.

We met up with a family from Nora’s school.  Karri, the mom, is as much of a fiber junky as I am and some how that makes an event like this that much more enjoyable.  Best of all, Nora loved every minute of it.  She walked through marketplace petting yarn and saying “Ohhh, mommy, look at this one!”  And then through the barns petting critters saying, “Mommy, can we get one?”

That’s my girl.

Best Game Ever

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I spent this last weekend with my parents and my sister and her beautiful family.  On Saturday, we went to the ocean for a day trip.

My oldest nephew, Sameer, is six weeks older than Nora. They had a raucous time climbing over sand castle remnants and being reminded not to throw sand at each other.

My youngest nephew, Arnav, was in the midst of ten-month-old angst: he was cutting teeth and getting over a cold. Naturally, when he fell asleep, it was time to get back to Portland while the getting was good.

The four-year-olds were exhausted, but still a bit wound.  And their shenanigans threatened to wake the little one.

So, my brother-in-law, in a moment of either genius or desperation, said, “Okay, we’re going to play a game. The person who talks the least wins.  Go!”

Thereupon the two children closed their eyes and went to sleep. For real.

And to his eternal credit, when they awoke back in Portland he declared, “You both won!”

I stand in awe.  Sumeet is humble about his accomplishment.  He claims his success was a fluke.  Still, with luck like that, I’d be stocking up on lottery tickets.

On Ice, Snow and Travel

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I grew up in Minnesota.  I remember winters where the middle of every street featured a wall of snow, dividing the lanes — there was no place else to put it.  Parking lots were used for snow storage.  You knew spring was imminent when the mountain of snow in the Kmart parking lot dwindled to a dirty hill. 

I don’t remember any buildings collapsing from snow, but years from now, I plan to tell my grandchildren that I was there when the Metrodome collapsed.  They won’t know if I simply set the event back twenty or so years — it will make for a great story.

We’ve lived in Portland for over ten years now.  Once or twice a year, a meteorologist spots a snowflake and the entire city shuts down.  Truly, an inch of accumlation causes people to abandon vehicles in the middle of the street.

But two years ago, there really was a blizzard in the Pacific Northwest.  In fact, it stormed a few times in as many days.  Many inches of snow.  Lots of ice.  Airport closures in three states.  Just a few days before we were to fly in Minnesota for Christmas. 

When I purchased the tickets a few months before, I thought myself clever for avoiding a layover in Denver.  Empirical data told me that Denver was far more likely to have a major winter storm than, say, Seattle.  And who wants to be stuck in an airport for the holidays?  With a toddler?  Nobody.  Nobody.

That Tuesday, all flights were cancelled out of Portland.  We were scheduled to fly out Wednesday morning around 5:00am or something crazy like that.  We packed, it felt ridiculous to pack, but we did it.  In the middle of the night, the power went out.  I knew this because I woke up to pee and the microwave clock was dark.  I woke up Ben and we took showers before we ran out of hot water. We set our flashlights in every room and hauled our suitcases out of the dark house and into the snowy driveway.

We made it to the airport in our all-wheel-drive car with chains on the tires.  So far, our flight was still on time. 

The airport was clogged with weary, smelly, pissed-off travelers, and we walked right by them and onto a small plane. 

We were in the air about twenty minutes when the pilot came on the loud speaker and told us we’d be returning to the Portland airport.  A warning light indicated a door was open.  My eyes closed while dread coursed through my nervous system.  Of course we would crash on the runway, it was punishment for actually getting on a flight. 

We didn’t crash.  We landed in back in Portland.  For the next half hour, the entire cabin listened nervously to the sound of a rear door being slammed repeatedly — Wham!  Wham!  Wham!  — in an attempt to make the warning light go out.  It was not a comforting sound.

Eventually, we were back in the air.  A number of passengers pointed out to the cabin crew that most of us were headed for Minneapolis and were quite likely to miss our connecting flight.  The flight attendants seemed non-plussed.  But, kinder heads prevailed and the plane was held just long enough for all of us to dash to the gate.

We made it to Minnesota, where they know how to handle such things. 

So that was two years ago.  Last year, we flew on Christmas day and some fool on another plane tried to blow up his underwear. 

This year?  I booked us a direct flight.