Sep. 29: In which I barely mention school

I know I should post something just to say that yes, I am still alive. The problem is that I can only talk about school stuff right now and that means I will absolutely put you to sleep if you read this. Much as it might surprise you, I never intentionally set out to put you to sleep. So… here’s my effort to share things that are in no way related to school or school accessories:

• Vic and the kids are going to Seattle for the weekend. On their agenda: BrickCon and a Seahawks game. If they have garlic fries at Qwest like they do next door at Safeco, Vic is going to eat them and reek for days. Last week he posted on Facebook that he ate a bunch of garlic and then I told him he stunk, making me sound like the meanest wife ever. In my defense, though, he totally stunk.
• With Stinky & Kids away, I have a peaceful house to myself for the entire weekend. Bliss.
• My dear friends Deanna and Debi are going to be in town next week. They’re bringing their daughters and have invited me and Katie to join them. I look forward to seeing everyone and doing girly things.
• Do you know who this guy is?

It’s Nick Offerman.
You might know him better as Ron Swanson.
Also Megan Mullally’s husband.
Without that crazy hair and thick ‘stache… he looks so young.

• Parks & Rec is such a great show.
• (I just can’t get over that pic up there.)
• (You try to look away! You can’t!)
• OK, I tried. There’s nothing else left for me to say. I almost wrote about the digital cable TV channels I recently found. Yes, life so boring here at the House of Manullang that I started to write about what happens when I push the channel button on the remote. Sorry.

Jan. 11: Wicked yet subtle hint

The husbands like when the wives go away for a weekend together, right? Because we come back all renewed and refreshed and they know how important that is, right? And they know how much we girls love getting dressed up and going out to flirt like mad with bartenders flash our wedding bands? And that whenever it’s just us girls, we tend to get in big ol’ catfight-y arguments about whose husband is better and which of us is the luckiest wife? And the husbands know that because of all these things, money is no object when it comes to making the wives happy?

Yes, I’m pretty sure I have that right.

On a totally unrelated note, I got this email today:

Wicked Girls Getaway 2011
New York, NY
May 5 - 8 , 2011

Back by popular demand! Broadway Across America Travel is proud to announce the return of this very special Broadway weekend   With an emphasis on escaping from the everyday and an elegant level of service, this package is our ultimate “Girls Getaway” to New York City. 

First introduced in 2008, this trip has been quickly adopted as an annual tradition. Mothers and daughters, sisters, girlfriends as well as couples are invited to take a memorable excursion to the excitement and glamour of the Big Apple.   For 2011, we once again offer two weekends to choose from with our July option designed to make this package a good fit for high school and college-aged children.

Limited to just 30 guests in May (we also have another getaway scheduled for July, see left), your trip is highlighted by orchestra seating to Broadway’s huge sensation Wicked and two other shows, a welcome cocktail reception with fellow guests, elegant 4-diamond accommodations, an optional luxurious spa session, private town car service, round trip airfare, a meet-and-greet lunch at Sardi’s and a few behind-the-scenes exclusives including a look into the inner workings of WICKED.

There’s no need to put off that trip to New York City any longer.  Get the girls together or take that special someone for that “ultimate getaway” and come and experience a weekend you won’t soon forget!
Please find the details below.

Yes, please.

Honey???

May 30: Girl-y weekend

Ah, how good it feels!  The hand of an old friend.  ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I had a fabulous weekend, and I’m exhausted, and I’m extra-glad that tomorrow’s a holiday so I have time to recuperate a bit before the busy-ness of a new week begins.

Yesterday afternoon April and I met up with our Boise girls, Deanna and Debi. They drove over to Portland for the long weekend and invited us to join them at their hotel downtown. We’ve all been friends since high school, and it had been way too long since we’d been together. We sat in their room and chatted for a while and then walked down to Kenny & Zuke’s for an amazing meal of pastrami Reubens. More chatting was followed by a walk back to the hotel and delightfully delicious cocktails, prepared by Debi. In case you were unaware, Debi is the best person EVER to have near a liquor cabinet.

TANGENT: Debi is the booze wench who came up with the infamous Dew-Mi. There are many other drinks she’s created for me in the past, but they were so good I don’t remember them. Last night she played bartender—the girls had packed a small stash for Portland, lucky us!—and although I don’t think she set out to create a memorable new cocktail, that’s exactly what she did. A li’l bit of Absolut berri açaí, some Rose’s lime juice, and tonic, poured over ice, and I SWEAR TO YOU, it tasted like gummy bears! We still need a good name for it; suggestions are welcome.

Funny that we were all grateful for time away from our kids, but we talked about them more than anything else. Isn’t that just the way it goes? Of course, there was also much talk of our incredibly supportive and helpful husbands who single-parented for the weekend so we could be together. We love them! We adore them! We owe them big-time!

Of the four of us, three of us got a decent night’s sleep. Poor ______ had to deal with the other three’s snoring, and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

I cannot even imagine where I would be today were it not for that handful of friends who have given me a heart full of joy. Let’s face it, friends make life a lot more fun.

This morning Deanna, Debi and I said good-bye to April—she had plans with her family—and walked down to Mother’s Bistro & Bar, where we enjoyed an amazing brunch.

ANOTHER TANGENT: You’ve heard my thoughts on the two Portland Lisa Schroeders—one is the nice, sweet, author friend of mine, and the other is the evil, screaming chef who screwed my 20th high school reunion. I just gotta say, Chef Lisa’s food is so delicious, you can almost forget she’s the Devil Incarnate. I hate being supportive of mean people, but I’m making an exception here. Soooo good.

Then came the shopping. Exciting news: Debi, Deanna, and I all have matching shoes now. This makes us utterly precious, doesn’t it? But these are super-duper cute shoes, right? And who could resist the bargain we found on them? Certainly not us.

Totally comfy. And did I mention PRECIOUS? Yes, we’re dorks.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I won’t bore you with photos of everything else we bought, but we totally wore ourselves out carrying all the heavy shopping bags. Our weekend together was short but cram-packed with treasures. We laughed and laughed so much. We shared silly and frustrating things about our kids, our friends, our coworkers. We used the “cancer card” whenever the opportunity came up. Many stories were prefaced with a strict order that “this is not for the blog!” (I think my friends don’t entirely trust me). We saw lots of volleyball players who completely ignored us. Some of our more frequently used phrases:

• “…and it comes with a free cat toy!” (thank you, Trevor)
• “sugar-lumps” (thank you, hilarious Flight of the Conchords song)
• “Obama lover” (thank you, some jackass Debi knows)
• “But… I have (she has) cancer!” (thank you, cancer)
• “I’m a bagel! I can do it myself!” (thank you, Dorothy)

Best of all, we completely enjoyed our time together, catching up and reminiscing. There’s nothing like old friends.

Good friends are good for your health. ~Irwin Sarason

Mar. 28: BFF/Little Sis Weekend haiku

A sisters retreat 
Food, drinks, laughs, and a tattoo
The perfect weekend

 

Five altogether
Meet at Lori’s giant house
It’s dark! Leave bread crumbs!

 

So many bathrooms
Still, Kathy’s stuff’s all over
Jen will model it

 

Pole dancers unite
In living room number three
Swing, you sexy babes!

 

Multi-purpose pole
Also gets dart off skylight
Lori! Please don’t fall!

 

Kathy stumbles, trips
“Damn new-fangled vent cover!”
Now she has a bruise

 

Big cardboard Hayden
“Put him in Brenda’s shower!”
No scream? Big letdown.

 

Margaritas flow
Machine can make so many
Keep ‘em coming, Kim

 

Kath’s up. “Gotta pee.
That was a floor squeak! It was!
Stop laughing, bitches.”

 

Noise in the bushes!
Larry’s telephoto lens?
We’ll put on a show

 

Brenda is pantsless
Kim and Kathy are mooning
Jen and Lori? Clothed.

 

Late Sunday morning
Tattoo time! Drop your pants, Kim
This won’t hurt a bit

 

Jen photographs Kim
(Specifically, her tanned bum)
Jen can’t help the tears

 

Green and pink ribbon
Honoring sister Kari
Brenda and Jen, too

 

Fun sisters’ weekend
So much love, laughter, friendship
Forever treasured.

 

I love you, girls. Thanks for such a great weekend! You are all amazing, strong, charming women, and I’m proud to call you mine. ♥

Mar. 27: Girls’ weekend

We have finally arrived at the time for the long-awaited girls’ weekend at Loveliest Lori’s house. The party’s been going for days already with Kathy, Brenda, and the aforementioned Loveliest Lori; Kim F’n and I are headed down to crash the party today. We are to play the parts of Pesky Little Sisters 1 and 2. We will rock those roles, you can be f’n sure.

Lo, the mischief in which we are sure to find ourselves, as one of the locations we’ll visit practices the art of tattooery. In my suitcase I have packed additional items to ensure many Kodak moments, including a pole for dancing, several bottles of rum, and my fanciest new shirt…

…which, when removed from its frame and worn, looks something like this:

For Curt D, Ken M, Larry B, Victor M, and lord-knows-who-else, your requests will most certainly be added to our list of photos to post on Facebook throughout the weekend:

• pillow fights
• IV pole dancing while dressed as naughty nurses
• naked gymnastics show in one of Loveliest Lori’s curtain-less living rooms
• everyone sleeping in one big bed

As any one of these things will make your heads explode, let me speak for all of us when I say it was glorious lovely pleasant scary knowing you. You may be missed. Possibly not.

More later. I promise.

July 30: Ashland trip report

If you’ve been paying attention you know that the 2007 Girls’ Weekend™ was July 20-23. Our destination was lovely southern Oregon, where we saw a variety of Shakespeare’s works performed. Here, finally, is the trip report I've been promising.

Friday morning April got to my house and we picked up Debi at the airport. We headed to Bridgeport for a delicious lunch at California Pizza Kitchen. (What, no more Pear & Gorgonzola pizza? They took it off the menu! Our server said people have been complaining so they might put it back but that didn’t do ME any good today. Bummer.)

Next stop was the Woodburn Company Stores. April had left her hanging clothes in Seattle so she needed to buy stuff to wear for the weekend. Debi and I just felt like spending money. We shopped for about an hour, made a Starbucks stop, and continued the drive to Medford.

We got to my mom’s house around 10 p.m. She wasn’t home. She was out partying with her homies at the Jackson County Fairapalooza. We waited around until she staggered in and then everyone went to bed.

Just kidding about the staggering, of course. But seeing Mom fully awake at 11 p.m. was a first for me.

Saturday morning Mom prepared a delightful breakfast for us. We weren’t in much of a hurry to get anywhere and it was nice to sit around and chat. Once we finally got moving, we went to Jacksonville for some shopping. Found a very cool toy store—in a brief moment of insanity I almost bought Jack an accordion—and some fun artisan shops. Ate lunch at Bella Union, where Uncle Paul performs regularly, and sat outside on their lovely vine-covered patio. We purchased some delicious souvenirs in the huge Harry & David store when we returned to Medford.

We went back to Mom’s to get ourselves ready for an evening in Ashland. Debi and her sharp eye noticed Jen’s idiot mistake: our play tickets were for 2 p.m., not 8 p.m. We had missed our show. While I checked the Internet for a solution, Debi called the box office and a lovely woman transferred our tickets to the evening performance. Hooray! However, even though she assured us there was another show that day, we started checking around and could find no evidence of it. We headed to Ashland, not sure how we would be spending our evening, but confident by then that we would not be seeing a play. Sure enough, “Distracted” was matinee-only on Saturday. I went to the box office as instructed and found that the lovely woman who transferred our tickets actually put us in a September show. Odd, hm? I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it back to that one—April and Debi almost definitely wouldn’t—but I took the tickets and decided to figure it out later.

We drove a couple miles further into Ashland and saw the movie “Hairspray.” There’s something wrong with going to a movie in a city like Ashland, especially in a cinema that looks like a supermarket, but at least our evening wasn’t a complete loss. Debi and I had seen both the original non-musical “Hairspray,” as well as the Broadway musical version, so we critiqued it from that snobbish point of view. Except for John Travolta, whose portrayal of Edna Turnblad nearly ruined the movie, we agreed that it was very well-cast. April (who was probably rolling her eyes in the back seat listening to our Siskel & Ebert-like review the whole way back to Medford) said she liked it too.

When we got to Mom’s around 11 p.m. she was still out. She had gotten her hands on Doobie Brothers concert tickets and staggered in soon after we got home. How on earth did my mom end up at a Doobie Brothers concert? I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.

During brunch Sunday morning I got a call from the Shakespeare Festival box office; the woman who had promised us tickets for the previous evening’s nonexistent show apologized profusely and refunded our $$. We thought that was very generous, as it was my own stupid mistake that we missed the show in the first place. Moral of that story: people in Ashland are nice.

Just before the play on Sunday afternoon we had a so-so lunch at Martino’s. “The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged)” matinee was fabulous. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys laughing. Here’s a spot-on review.

Shopping in Ashland was fun and walking through town was almost bearable in the heat. We found some nice little gift shops and purchased some souvenir goodies. We had dinner reservations at Cucina Biazzi. I had never tried flash-fried sage leaves before but April made us eat them and they were really quite tasty.

Our evening entertainment got off to a horribly horrible start (in my opinion) when we stood in the Festival Courtyard for the Green Show, a performance of renaissance music and dancing that made my ears and eyes bleed. While I’m sure that a lot of the people there enjoyed it, I was definitely not one of them. Fortunately things improved from there; “The Tempest” was very good. I had never seen anything on the Elizabethan Stage before. And except for the guy behind me that started snoring loudly during the second act, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Prospero was incredible.

Monday morning I woke up with a terrible headache. April and Debi both felt yucky too. The drive back to Portland was quiet-ish. We made a quick return visit to the Woodburn outlet mall and then took Debi to the airport. April and I went to the hospital where she was to meet her mom and sister, and I took off to Clackamas to get Katie to her swimming lesson.

For anyone that isn’t me, April, or Debi, it must suck to be you. So sorry. Our memories of the 2007 Girls’ Weekend™ will be of a marvelous few days full of entertaining entertainment and edible food. As you know, that’s what Girls’ Weekends are all about. FYI, they are not about pillow fights in panties or anything remotely like that, much to some husbands’ dismay. Although after all that high-brow entertainment of the Shakespeare Festival, we do have culture and sophistication pouring out our collective arses (to paraphrase a song from “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” not to imply we have food poisoning).

—Jen

July 24: Martin, my explanation

Wow, four days is the longest I've gone without posting in a long time. There's a good reason, though: I spent the past several days with two of my favorite girly-friends on our bi-annual/semi-regular/much-too-infrequent Girls' Weekend™. We are all back where we belong, and our trip report is one of the bazillion things I hope to get done today.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a killer headache and after an hour or so behind the wheel, finally asked Debi and April to drive the rest of the way back to Portland. When we got home I took Katie to her swimming lesson and then went back home, took some very powerful drugs (apparently) and went straight to bed. I remember very little of the evening. I vaguely recall CSI: Miami being very loud on our bedroom TV, an announcement about Drew Carey's new job, and giving the kids their goodies from southern Oregon. I woke up this morning when I fell out of bed. Really. It hurt. As soon as Vic made sure I hadn't broken anything, he laughed. Big meanie.

I still feel all disoriented, but except for missing my girls, there's no place like home. If I improve throughout the day I'll get our trip report posted. Otherwise you'll have to wait, Martin. Solly.


--Jen

May 16: More artsy, less fartsy

Hooray! Plans for the 2007 Girls' Weekend™ are being finalized. This year Debi, April and I are traveling south a few hours to attend the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and other productions in the Ashland area. We'll be seeing "The Tempest," "The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged)," and "Distracted." I know you're jealous. Don't deny it.

Previous Girls' Weekends™ were held in San Francisco, Boise and Los Angeles. This will be the first one that includes a road trip. I'm psyching myself up for it as we speak. And Debi, I promise I won't play The Carpenters in the car. You're welcome.

No husbands, no kids. Sounds super, hm? Sounds like something I'd like to do before July.

--Jen