The Fifth

THE MORNING AFTER: Ah, yes, the Fifth of July. Never a day to look forward to. You probably stayed up way too late the night before, ate and drank too much, and the streets are littered with debris from the explosions.

Me, I've always thought that people should have the FIFTH of July off, not the Fourth. Work on the Fourth, get off, go home, enjoy the fireworks and then have the following day to sleep in and clean up.

We headed back over to Queen Anne hill first thing today to collect the car we left parked there on the Fourth (as part of our fireworks show placeholder plan). I was happy to see the neighborhood wasn't trashed from all the interlopers (us, and several hundred more) who showed up for the party yesterday.

LIONS ON THE PROWL: At around 11 a.m. we made a run to the SMuT (horrible acronym for the Seattle Municipal Tower) to turn in some paperwork regarding a building/remodeling permit. What a mistake THAT was.

I knew there was an international Lions Club convention in town. What I didn't know is that 12,000 of them would be parading the streets of Seattle today for whatever reason. The parade, the largest in Seattle history, according to KING news, seemed to stretch from north of Seattle Center, through the core of downtown and bordering on Belltown and Sodo. In other words, basically the whole city was friggin GRIDLOCK. What should have been about a 15 minute drive took nearly an hour. Grrrrrr. (Or should that be, "ROAR!!!"?)

Because of the traffic, I had time to snap a couple of photos along the way. Here's the Federal Building.We did finally arrive (thanks to lots of illegal turns, cutting through parking lots and alleys on my part). To save parking $$$ (outrageously expensive downtown), I stayed with the car while Christian and the kids headed to the permit office.WINGED WONDER: While Christian and I were working (and working and working and working) outside today, we saw a beautiful butterfly flutter by. I couldn't help but call out to the kids, "Hey, one of your butterflies came back!"

Backstory: In May of 2010, the kids grew a few Painted Lady butterflies from a kit. We released them in a state park, so they could enjoy their lives freely. I told the kids that the butterfly must have been flying over and recognized the house, so it came back for a visit. The kids kept a lookout for awhile, but "our" butterfly had moved on.Maybe it will be back another day. :)

EWE R BEAN WACHT: I absolutely cracked up upon seeing a blaze orange spray-painted warning on a 4x8 sheet of plywood outside Catharine Blaine K-8 school this afternoon. CJ wanted to know what was so funny. I pointed at the plywood and he cracked up.Apparently spray paint cans don't have spellcheck, har har. I told CJ that I thought it was especially ironic because the sign is outside a school, and asked him what kind of grade he thought the sign painted would get.

"An F-minus," he predicted.

WATERWORKS: It only took me about 13 minutes to run Annabelle to ballet and back today, but somewhere in that timeframe, poor CeeJ had one of Those Moments. In today's case, the Moment was CJ finally really realizing that every living thing eventually dies - including himself and everyone he knows and loves.

And so, from about, oh, 3:30 p.m. until right now (10:01 p.m.) there were many, many questions and many, MANY tears.

We talked about various stories of what happens after you die, ranging from the whole heaven/hell/judgment day thing many believe to reincarnation and lots of possibilities in between. By bedtime, both CJ AND Annabelle were rather inconsolable. We assured them that what they were thinking and feeling is totally normal and that all humans wrestle with those questions and feelings at some point.

Obviously, it's a conversation we'll continue to have.