Seen on the sidewalk in a suburb of Seattle:

I don’t care how cheap it is, I’m not taking it. That being said, it’s no longer there. This means either someone is loving their new (free!) toilet or the original owner just threw the damn thing away.

Either way, it’s not sitting out on the sidewalk. And that, my friend, is a good thing for my neighborhood.

So tell me, what’s the craziest thing you’ve seen on the street of your neighborhood.  And does anything really beat a free toilet?

Man, a blogger even mentions ovulation and y’all think she’s done gone and got herself knocked up.

Lesson learned:

Don’t blog about ovulation.

It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon when I got a text message from Heidikins asking me if I was really pregnant that I realized, “crap, the interweb thinks I’m pregnant!”

Oopsie.

So yeah, not pregnant.

Not even thinking about becoming pregnant.

But, thanks for being so excited about the thought of me being pregnant.

At least someone is!

Here’s the thing, I spent last week reading my latest SDBBE book, “A Midwife’s Story”. It was about, you guessed it, natural births. And not just any natural birth, but natural births in the early 1980’s.

Oh yeah, and they ladies giving birth were Amish. And it was a true story.

Needless to say, I had babies on the brain.

(While I totally think the Amish rock, I must say that I’m glad I’m not one. I’m a lazy sack of crap and wouldn’t last 2 days in their world. I’m just saying.)

I finished the book yesterday afternoon. Which is good. Now I can turn my attention off of natural childbirths on back onto more important things like…

This morning the bus was full. I ended up sitting next to a nice business man. Once we got into the city the bus riders began to exit at each stop. This left the bus virtually empty. And yet, I didn’t get up and move to my own seat. I sat there next to the nice business man.

Is this weird?

Should I have gotten up and moved to my own seat? I mean there were like 30 empty seats.

Seriously, does anyone know the proper bus etiquette for this situation?

We had some friends in town the last few days, which means we spent the past two nights showing them the greatness that Seattle has to offer.

“Oh look at the Space Needle! Cool, isn’t it?”

“Seattle has a huge Old Navy. Yippee!”

“And a Gap!”

You know the usual touristy thing that people do while visiting Seattle. Seattle’s cool like that.

(I also said things to them like; “don’t use the bathroom at our new house. We don’t have doors on them.”)

Last night we decided to take them to one of our favorite places in Seattle. The thing that’s so great about this little local is the fact that is feels very non-Seattle.

Right, we took them to do a very un-Seattleish thing while visiting Seattle. We’re lame. The thing is, Alki Beach is awesome. It’s like a little piece of Venice, California right in the heart of Seattle. The 26 days of the year where there is sunshine in Seattle, Alki Beach is the perfect place to spend them at.

The evening started out great. First, I took Babboo to get his hair trimmed for today’s Picture Day at school. (My request to the stylist was merely “don’t make him look like a nerd!”)

Babboo was none too thrilled about the hair cut. Anytime I asked him to smile he simply said “cheese” and ignored my request to actually smile.

Thankfully the kid did not end up looking like a nerd. (Speaking of nerds, what exactly does a nerd look like?)

And then the night really took off. We packed up our gear and headed off to the beach!

The Beach!

I love the beach.

I love the sun.

I love our friends.

And I mostly love eating pizza, in the sun, at the beach with our friends.

That is until a big black billow of smoke is noticed in the background.

Nothing puts an end to a nice evening at the beach then watching someone’s house burn to the ground.

Thankfully, reports show, that nobody was injured. Our friend was up close and personal to the situation, even before the authorities arrived to put out the fire (we had parked next to where the house was burning and he wanted to get his car out of the way). He witnessed someone opening up the front door to the house and a cat escaping. That poor cat must have been scared out of his mind.

We stayed at our place in the sand and watched while every.single.person at the beach moved towards the fire! Didn’t their mom’s teach them to head away from danger? Apparently not.

Minutes later the fire trucks arrived. And then more and more followed. Babboo and our friend’s kids got excited about the commotion. They sat on the beach, facing the street, and waved at the passing firemen. (Thankfully the firemen[women] didn’t slow down to wave back.)

The house fire was quickly put out and we enjoyed the rest of our time together at the beach, ignoring our hacking and whizzing from all the smoke in the air.

Eventually Babboo managed to swallow every piece of sand on the entire beach and it was decided that we might as well call it a night.

From here on our, if anyone comes to visit us in Seattle I can assure you the following things will happen:

• My son will not look like a nerd.
• You will get a bladder infection from lack of restroom use.
• My child will throw exuberant amounts of sand on your child.
• He’ll probably throw some at you too.
• You will eat pizza.
• You might even eat tacos.
• I won’t pay attention to you like I should since I’ll be too busy taking self-portraits with the kid:

• We’ll show you a good time.
• That I can guarantee.

Reasons I like riding the bus:

• I can spend my commute listening to music and NPR on my iPod.
• My work pays for my bus pass.
• Don’t have to be stuck in traffic.
• Sitting next to hott business men on a small bus seat is always a good thing.
• Uninterrupted reading time.
• Pretty views of the city.
• Good for the planet.
• Not having to pay for parking in downtown Seattle.

Reasons why I hate riding the bus:

• The bus hates pretty shoes. (Please see Exhibit A)

Exhibit A:

Oh yes, the bus totally ate my boot heel. Nothing like trying to carry your toddler up the hill to your house on a jacked up heel.

So tell me, is it possible to look pretty while walking around on a jacked up boot heel?

I woke up extra early yesterday to ensure I would get to work a little early.  I wanted to make sure I got off a little early.

I raced to pick up Babboo at school. Then we raced home.  I frantically got the meat for dinner doused in marinade while crazily throwing sunscreen, water bottles and swim diapers into the backpack.

I took my work clothes off and threw them on the bedroom floor while I shimmied into my bikini and cover up.  Babboo and I put our sandals on, I grabbed a blanket and my sunglasses and we raced out to load the car.

I open the sunroof; pumped up some Old 97’s on the stereo and we drove the 45 minutes to meet up with some old friends at the wading pool at a city park.

“Do you want to go swimming with Bronzx and her mommy?”

“Yes!”

“Do you want to put your swim diaper on and get in the water?”

“Oh, Yes.  Babboo want to go swimming!”

“Do you like to swim?”

“Oh yes!”

Finally(!) we got to the park.  I parked the car, loaded my arms up with all of our gear and we hurried to find our friends, who were waiting for us.

I put the blanket down on the grass and, for the first time that day, relaxed a bit.  I got Babboo all ready to get in the water, the entire time asking him if he was excited to get in the water.

Oh yes, he was very excited.

Once he got in the water, all he wanted to do was this:

“Don’t you want to play in the water?”

“No.  Babboo sit.”

“Do you want to go and splash over there with Bronx?”

“No. Sit here.”

“Well, at least smile for mommy.”

And that’s how the rest of our afternoon went.

Fun times.

I loved living in downtown Seattle. I loved the fact that I only had to walk a few blocks to get to my office. It was fun to be able to do shopping at any number of stores on my way home in the afternoon. I liked being able to cross the street to the book store and read gossip mags while Babboo played with their train set.

But most of all, I just liked being in the heart of all the action.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not really a “heart of all the action” type person. I would never actively seek any type of action. Especially not the heart of the action. But I’m totally okay with the action finding me, say, if I lived in in said heart of said action.

Okay, so now that we’ve moved safely out of downtown Seattle I can talk a little more specifically about our life in downtown Seattle. (I hate to be all “oh, scary internet can’t know where we live”…but um yeah, the scary internet can’t know where we live.)

But now I can tell you that we lived here:

Our old apartment is one of Seattle’s more iconic buildings. It’s hard to miss, what with the roundness and the fact that they put a huge display of Christmas tree lights up every December. Plus it’s located rightnext door to The Paramount, one of Seattle’s major theaters. So we just had to tell people, “we live in the round building next to The Paramount” and everyone knew where that was.

Good for us, not good for my secret life on the interweb.

From our balconies we had the perfect (perfect!) view of what was happening in the heart of the action, without having to be in any actual action.

(See, I told you I only liked action from afar.)

Like all the many riots that I heard and watched via my couch:

Then there was the time they filmed that Charlize Theron movie outside our building. I stood at the window, camera poised, just waiting for some sort of shot that I could then sell to People magazine for a gazillion dollars. Of course all I got was a possible Charlize sighting.

Very possible. Wouldn’t you agree?

Then there was the time Mamma Mia! came to Seattle and I actually had tickets to see it with some of my SeattleMomBlog lady friends.

I was thrilled (read: nerdy!) enough to stand on my balcony and try to get a picture of me with the Mamma Mia! tour truck before I headed out to see the show.

There was also the time Death Cab for Cutie was in town (yes, we had tickets. Yes, we also had a small child. Yes, we sold our tickets). And I woke up on Saturday morning to see one of the member of the band packing up after their show the night before.

There was also the time we woke up to watch the beginning of the staging for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade outside our front room window.

We threw on our coats (but didn’t bother to brush our teeth!) and headed outside to watch the parade from the front door of our apartment building. Seriously, we sat on the front row of the parade and watched it in our pajamas and slippers.

Of course, in pure Isabel style, we decided to move out right as the pool was reopening for the summer. Not being able to partake in pool time this year will definitely be missed. (Although we have yet to see any sun here in Seattle. So whatever.)

And not having a gym to use anytime we want, for free, will be sad. But only a little sad as I honestly only used our gym a few times. (Dude, using any type of gym equipment becomes impossible when trying to do so with a toddler around. Impossible, I say!)

But I’m pretty sure having a grocery store that I can walk to (!!) from our new house will make up for missing out on the rest of this stuff in downtown.

Yep, I’m confident it will make up for it.

I hate to say it, but having a grocery store nearby is the type of excitement that I’m anxious to be in the heart of right now.

So tell me, do you like being in the heart of the action or do you prefer being near the action.