Pirates!

We meant well. It's just that, well, we didn't know.

It's another beautiful July day in Seattle, blah, blah, and we ran out of things to do at home, so we decided to head out for a morning at the beach. Instead of the usual quick trip down to Lake Washington, I suggested that we head over to Alki in West Seattle. Better sand, salt water, marine air...and the pirates were coming ashore today.

Pirates?

Pirates. It sounded like fun. Summer around here means Seafair, a series of events, connected I-don't-know-how into a "fair" of sorts that seems to last most of the summer. We've experienced the events on nearby Lake Washington for several years--like it or not--since it's so close to home. Massive crowds gather for hydroplane races and the air show, featuring the Blue Angels and forcing the daily closure of the I-90 bridge (it's an interstate, and they close it) for about an hour to accommodate...something.

But then there are these pirates. I've read about them, seen them on TV (before we chucked it). They seem to be a group of fairly normal adults who dress up once a year as buccaneers and act like utter twats. We had something similar in St. Louis, where I grew up. The Veiled Prophet organization gave local businessmen a kind of annual costumed release from the bondage of their khakis and needlepointed belts. The big VP event was the debutante ball, at which the masked, heavily bejeweled (and presumably sodden) veiled prophet would welcome young, wealthy, white women into "his court of love and beauty." Not a joke. I went, several times. A willing participant. Filthy, sodden fun. Humiliating. Embarrassing.

These pirates seem less sad, somehow, and less evil. Drunk, yes, but they're pirates, so you expect that. And, to bring us back to the beach, they were scheduled to come ashore--raid the beach--this morning. We're early people these days, so when we arrived, there weren't that many folks around. Vendors seemed to be anticipating big crowds, though, offering ice cream, kettle corn, face painting, and pirate gear--tons of pirate gear. As we walked toward a sandy spot away from the band and the out-of-place pole vaulting competition (more medieval than pirate), Brooke asked "so what do these pirates do when they come ashore?" Good question. "Looks like they sell stuff."

I've heard the pirates used to be pretty out of control, and that they've reined it in a lot recently. A family event, and all that. I don't know how bad phony pirates can be--pretend pillaging?--but I'm kind of sorry to have missed out.

We found a spot in the sand with a view of the gathering "armada," several sleek sailboats flying the skull and crossbones, positioned about fifty meters offshore. The crowd on the beach was much more impressive--thousands of people with kids, dogs, coolers, umbrellas, blankets...and pirate gear. If it were pirates versus spectators, the pirates wouldn't stand a chance. Several of the more convincingly outfitted pirates milled around, making friends. I snapped a photo of Aussie-accented swashbuckler and a gregarious, hirsute Russian guy looking menacing a black hat-and-flag ensemble and Tony Soprano potbelly. In this photo I particularly like the disembodied hand flying the Motley Crüe sign--a gesture with inexplicable longevity.

At this point it was clear that we had made a gross miscalculation. It was a mistake to be here. We should leave. Zoë was behaving poorly and Elliott was tired, hungry, and poopy. We were unprepared. But the pirates were going to do this storming the beach thing and we've been in Seattle for seven years and not ever seen it. All these people were here to see it. It was going to be cool. Worth staying for. We would stay and witness this tradition.

The armada was growing, though it was unclear that these ersatz pirate ships would have the wherewithal to come ashore, much less storm anything. To the east, from Elliott Bay, came some cannon shots. The sloops moored before us had been firing rounds all morning, but these were louder. These explosions were coming from two mid-sized landing craft, steaming toward us loaded with pirates. Here it was. The attack! Everyone on the beach stood. Kids stopped misbehaving and ran toward the landing zone. Parents yelled at their kids to come the hell back, then ran off after them. Small-time thieves moved in to grab beach gear and wallets abandoned by parents chasing kids. The landing craft eased into the beach right in front of the giant inflatable pirate island cum kid playground. And I mean it eased in. Backed up. Re-approached. And the ramp...lowered...and...some...pirates...walked...ashore.

This was by far the worst pirate event I've ever attended.

Feeling duped and frustrated, we packed up our hungry kid and our misbehaving kid and walked down the busy boardwalk to our hot car. Along the way, I passed a sad-faced young woman with a bandana on her head and pirate makeup on. She was standing sullenly against a wall next to a similarly-costumed young man. She frowned and said to him: "I thought there would be cool stuff here. All I've seen is a bunch of angry parents."

Yup.

Happy Fifth of July

I took today off as an extension of yesterday's holiday--a mini-weekend right in the middle of the week. I started with Zoë's swim lesson at Safe & Sound this morning. I'm so proud of how brave she is in the water, especially putting her head under and jumping in--fearless. The goodbye was predictably tearful for us both as I put her on the school bus back to daycare. I suppose I could have taken her home and spent the day with her, if parting was so difficult...

Instead, I spent a glorious day with no children and no responsibilities. I ran two loops around Seward Park, bought salmon for dinner, blueberries, and mangoes at PCC, dropped my groceries at home and rushed out for an afternoon under the sun at the lake. Magnificent. My book and I had a fantastic time. My feet were having a great time when I snapped this picture, but if you ask them now, they'd tell you the time would have been a little bit better with sunscreen.

What did YOU do this morning?

So this was my morning. Two months ago I chipped my front tooth on a piece of mango and have been waiting ever since for the pleasure of an hour tilted back in a dentist's chair, blood pooling in my head, jaw cranked open and secured with a bite block, and a large rubber face condom attached I-don't-know-how to several of my teeth. I was like this for a while, looking out the skylight at...sky. I was sure my jaw had become unhinged and I'd have to spend the rest of the day waiting for an ER doc to give me enough ativan to manipulate it back into its proper place. I dodged that, but twelve hours later my jaw is still killing me.

The day got better. I went from the place of suffering to my clinic to work on a giant stack of charts that needed tending. For about two hours my face continued to be totally numb (I had some fillings replaced too), and I was sure that I was drooling like an idiot while I worked out care plans for patients from the day before.

I spent the early part of this Tuesday afternoon in a weekly lunch meeting, followed by a discussion with classmates outside by the Seattle U fountain. It was a bright, sunny, warm day and I could once again feel my face. Just when I thought things couldn't get any better, they did. Our afternoon didatic session go canceled due to who-cares-why and I was sprung. I took advantage of this found time by going for an hour-long run on Lake Washington.

Tonight we had some friends over for dinner out on the driveway patio. I'm starting to embrace the driveway more as a legitimate outdoor pastime. We still need plants out there, but I like it.

I'm headed for bed and a gram of tylenol. Reveille at 0530, I'm sure.

Saturday in the Park

Saturday was brilliant. The nicest day of the year, meteorologically speaking, and a day off for me. A predictably early morning--5:30a, I think. Zoë has learned that getting out of bed, opening her door, and coming upstairs to flail around in bed with her parents guarantees her the attention she wants. We've set a 6:00a alarm for her that plays beach surf sounds. Our agreement is that she can come upstairs when she hears the ocean. I'll have to check for conch shells in her bed, because she seems to be hearing the ocean earlier every day. Could be the 5:15a sunrise...

An early-morning trip to Seward Park for a quick walk around the point became more like an expedition. The parking lots were full of cars belonging to people training with the Leukemia Team in Training, so we found some nearby street parking. I forgot the front wheel of the stroller (a Burley bike trailer with stroller conversion--useful if you remember the parts), so we pushed it for three miles on two wheels. Not as bad as I thought, since neither Zoë nor Elliott would ride in it. Zoë was a very big girl and walked most of the way, first running, then walking, dawdling, and flat out refusing the move. Remember that weak, floppy feeling you got when your mom took you shopping? She had that. Eventually we got her back into the stroller with most of her clothes on backwards and made it around the loop in time to get home for lunch.

Just as we completed our walk my pager went off. I've got three moms-to-be due this month, so I've been anticipating the whenever page. A call to triage confirmed that one of my patients, a 24 year-old Vietnamese woman in her first pregnancy, had ruptured the night before (her water broke) and she was being admitted to labor & delivery. She wasn't particularly active in her contraction pattern and my on-call colleagues can handle anything, so I figured I could count on some more family time.

Home, lunch, book for Zoë, nap (for everyone), then that sleepy indecisiveness about what to do with the afternoon. We'd planned to go to Coleman Pool, the outdoor, heated, salt-water pool in West Seattle's Lincoln Park, but with a laboring patient it seemed like a bad idea to be that deep into an activity. We decided instead to explore the new wading pool on Capitol Hill (I could walk to the hospital if called in). That's where I took the picture of Zoë. It's an amazing place. A pyramid of cascading water feeds into a fast-moving chute, eventually spreading out into a lazy trickle down a cobblestone-studded slab. Adjacent is a huge, warm, wading pool, well-populated with kids and probably full of urine. But whatever, it was beautiful Saturday and every kid deserves to swim in a little pee on such a day. We hung out there for a couple of hours, playing in the pee, watching the capoeira dancers do their thing, the guys tying one another up in preparation for some performance, apparently, the parade of man-kilts, tattoos, piercings, musicians, lost children, and lost adults. Pretty great.

Home, dinner outside on the "patio" (our driveway) Brooke's newest bid for some outside space in our city townhouse. She has created a magical little world where we usually just park our car. I put Elliott to bed and then decided it was time, at about 7p, to head in to the hospital.

My patient had been making great progress all day, contracting and painfully dilating all day while I splashed around with my daughter in the pee-pee pool. By the time I arrived, it was just a waiting game. I worked on some admin stuff while I waited, chatted with the nurses, fellow residents, and Carroll, my attending. Eventually, we focussed on the birth event: ninety minutes of pushing resulted in a charming little baby boy. Some stitches, a lot of documentation and orders, then home. Asleep at about one o'clock.

My only regret is that I didn't get a beer on such a lovely day. I'll fix that today, unless the pager starts going again.