Parents & cute pants, Colorado and California

[seal]

My parents went back to Sweden yesterday, after spending two weeks with me and the Geek. It was the second time they met the Geek in person and their first time in Colorado, and in this little flat.

I polished and polished, the geek sorted papers and drove boxes to the storage locker like a maniac. I cleaned and cleaned, I scrubbed the baseboards (Colorado is very dusty, due to the dry air) and I used a very intimidating carpet cleaner device in the condo and scared the crap out of the neighborhood dogs.
When I saw my small and confused looking parents that thursday, with their broken and skeletal English skills I cried that same evening in front of the geek. They look older and my moms hands are so thin. She's lost a lot of weight because she cut out all sugar from her diet, due to stress-diabetes. Nowadays she looks like a wary little sandpiper on the edge, but she's healthy and swift enough to annoy a battalion of daughters, she proved that in the next few days.

My mom: Soo..(running her index finger over some surfaces in the kitchen area) ...I have to admit, it is very clean here, you didn't hire someone to help you out, did you?

That was not when I stopped and gave her a shake around the shoulders. That happened one of the days when we took a walk (mom has grown to love walking in the fall of her life, it rhymes very well with her nervous temperament). She was addressing a certain thing I have managed to conquer well in my life, a thing I thought impossible to diminish, and yet she tried - mostly because she was frustrated about something else - that's when I gave her a gentle shake, and then we were mostly fine for a while, that's how it's mostly worked with my mom.
My dad is different - he is mostly a short guy with a Napoleon complex, and a engineer on top of that, which means that he has the god given right to alter, change, improve or destroy anything around him without asking first. Also he knows everything even if he's never tried it, and if someone else (female) knows something really well and tries to give him advice on some area in which he might be a rookie, it just blows by him...it's like he genuinely lacks the capacity of hearing a female voice giving advice - it probably has something to do with channeling out my mom's voice for over 30 years.

If I was someone else than me, I would find the conversations between my parents quite amusing from time to time, worthy of a Woody Allen script - the kind of bickering mid-to-late-life-crisis Allen movie I don't enjoy much myself...but still, I did laugh out loud a few times. Mostly nowadays, when it comes to certain life-areas, I've almost become the parent of my parents - they are like kids and I'm the grown up.

Another thing my dad has done over the years is film me, and he's adapted this into a DvD movie about important events of my life (from the age of 1.5 to 18). And he's shown this film to all the 3 guys I've had a serious relationship with (= lived with). There are so many Fat Greek Polish-Swedish Wedding-moments passing through you when you are forced to sit in the dark and experience your guy seeing you pee spit and blow snot out your nose as a small nude shrimp of a toddler, and later do all kinds of smarmy/embarrassing kid-stuff, and then later, as a young teen, look down, away, under your fringe, pout, and make a bored face expression marathon.
It's not for the faint hearted ones, and only true love can survive it.

Mostly I marvel at a few things when it comes to myself as a teen: 1) My nose, boobs and bangs grew way way WAY faster than the rest of me, and I was a weird looking girl with horrid hair that would not shape into any kind of hair style, so I have since long stopped to attempt hair styles.
2) I was slim but thought I wasn't. Original huh? I wish my own self today could go back and kick my youngster skinny butt hard, for not enjoying the easiest figure-years of my life.

When it comes to figure, only one positive thing has happened to me in the last 6 months. I have re-discovered cute pants.
I mean the phenomena of go cute-pants shopping whenever you're dissatisfied with your weight. There are many cute boot cut models out there now. I've bought some cute flirt-with-grunge-light pants, some serious grey professionals, some geeky intellectuals in brown or green corduroy and all kinds of black jeans. I'm in love with all of these new cute pants, and they make my round ass look - still kinda big, but cute too, and I don't get the OMGI'MFAT angs as much. So I think cute pants are BAD for losing weight and mostly I got them to hold the fort when my mom gets on my case and tells me I need to diet/go to starving camp/live on the treadmill - which she did of course, but she also said the pants were cute, HA!

To finalize this parent-heavy post, me and the geek celebrated our 3 year anniversary on my birthday (of us falling in Luuve)by going to Estes Park up in the mountains and visiting the same Italian restaurant we ate at in 2003, only my parents were there this time, so that was a bit weird. I'm sure the geek felt their hawk eyes on him when he handed me the pendant in polished peridot/abalone/tourmaline and a lovely card. I think he passed their test.

The last weekend of my parent's stay we all went to northern California to visit my second cousin and her family, and we toured the coast and San Francisco a bit. I haven't seen Asia since I was a kid, so it was great to meet her and her husband and daughter. To sum it up, I love to see my family, but I also love to wave goodbye to them.

I did manage to go into the archives and finish one of the two voluntary projects I'm doing there, and I set my parents up for a day of sightseeing Denver while I did this.
Two things of notice happened: 1) My parents were evacuated from the Denver Historical museum along with a bunch of other people, due to an anthrax-threat that turned out to be a joke. All my efforts in calming my parents into thinking that Colorado is a safe place, were sandbagged with that incident and the horrible hostage drama at a CO highschool that same week.
2) Erin at the State Archives told me that they have had a meeting where they discussed the possibility of creating some kind of position for me, instead of waiting for someone to leave. We'll see how it goes with that, but I'll try to finish project number 2 within the month, and then I'll see where I stand.

Pics below are from the gorgeous Colorado fall in the mountains, and from the brief Northern California taste. The next time I go to Cali, I want to have time to meet some friends as well.

The gorgeous foothills




and mountains of Colorado



In the fall...



The elk come down from the mountains in the fall, to camp in the parks of Estes Park for the winter, this was in the city, the alpha male bugling to make people keep their distance from his females and youngsters.



Carmel basilica and monastery along the Monterrey coastline - Northern California. The Spaniards built it in the 1700's



It gave me the pleasure of drooling at some lovely catholic citch, like this:


...and this:


Otherwise the coastline and peninsula was grey and windy, full of birds, seals,



cedars



and these little buggers, who were neither squirrels nor chipmunks but some close relative of both, according to some local passer-by.


The following day we visited San Francisco



and its China Town



Alcatraz



...from the inside. (the cell of Al Capone!)


And the handsome and famous sea-lions of Pier 39!

Comments

[usuakari.livejournal.com]

If we all get filthy rich suddenly, I'd go there and be your tour-guide, and then I'd go to Australia...preferably in the winter, when the poisonous spiders sleep.

What makes you think the poisonous spiders sleep? They never sleep. Like Chuck Norris, they simply wait. And the winter is worse, because then they come inside to avoid the cold...

And then there's the Drop Bears. Don't get me started on the bloody Drop Bears...

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

I don't know what's more frightening, the poisonous 8 leggers or the comparison (and mental connections it breeds) between them and old Chuck.

One of my oldest friends spent 5 childhood years in Australia, and she told me all kinds of terror-stories about all the poisonous animals there!