Getting back on the blogging horse

Between family, work, and serving on one volunteer board, I feel like I have a pretty overloaded full life. I like to joke: work life balance - choose two.

Several friends have remarked how well I seem to manage all of my competing responsibiliies, which seems to speak to the value of those smoke and mirrors I bought on sale that time.

Despite my time pressures, I've missed having a creative outlet besides the napkin or kiddie menu drawings I do for Ava when we go out to eat. I like to help her practice letters by writing short words with matching illustrations and having her pick out letters she knows. She knows "A" well because of her name, so a fan favorite is the string BAT CAT FAT HAT MAT SAT VAT. Vat is a tough one to explain to a three year old though. Nothing modern really comes in vats. Pickles? I digress, mightily.

So to get back on the ball with writing regularly in more than just a Tweet-length message, I'm taking part in National Blog Posting Month or NoBloPoMo in which the goal is to post something every day for the month of November. So far, the month has presented sufficient blog fodder.

In the interest of trying to emphasize that "life" more than the "work" in work-life-balance, a couple nights ago, we loaded up the whole family and my folks to try a new restaurant, Crawfish King, in Seattle's International District. For anyone who's been to New Orleans or similar places where crawfish are on the menu, it's one of those places where they hand you a bib, mallets, crab crackers and all manner of implements along with a pile of steaming, butter-slathered seafood, corn, potatoes and sausage on the table and leave you to get all medieval with your meal.

Note to self: if you've let your 3 year old see parts of the Alien movies with you recently (because A) there is always one showing on cable somewhere and B) your husband is incapable of NOT watching it if he sees it on the cable guide), when the waitress rips open a bag on the table and yummy, yet kinda creepy looking crawfish spill out suddenly in all directions, things are going to get ugly.

3 year old math:

=

Alien image courtesy this site

Specifically, said 3 year old will violently push her chair back from the table screaming as if one of the crawrish is about to jump off the table and attach itself to her face. Seriously, haven't you people seen what these things do when they make it through stasis?!

After peeling her off the ceiling, calming her down, and reassuring diners at nearby tables that we hadn't inadvertently poured a scalding hot bucket of crawfish and vegetables on our child, we settled in for a lovely, though messy, meal with both kids happily chowing down on crawfish, sausage, jambalaya, gumbo, fried catfish and fried okra. We're from the south: two fried dishes where one is a vegetable is a balanced food pyramid, right?

Thanks to the butcher paper-covered tables, before we were surrounded by pools of buttery, seafood goodness, we had a chance to practice  BAT CAT FAT HAT MAT SAT VAT. Because if you're going to be terrified by alien-esque seafood, you should at least fit in some book learnin' first.