Consolation Prizes

I lost one of my dearest friends last week and I hear another friend will be packing up to leave soon. I don't handle changes well, especially when loss is involved, so I've been rather sulky of late.

But.....and thank goodness for the but......there are consolation prizes and I want to recognize them:

It turns out that my impulse-purchased second hand bike was rather a score and is worth a bit more than I paid. This fact is neither here nor there as have every intention of holding on to it because every time I ride the bike I love it more, but it does make me feel rather clever.

Yesterday's ride was to the Montavilla Farmers Market where I had one of the most memorable peaches of my life, an Elegant Lady grown by the Baird family of Dayton. This really was a fantastic peach, and I enjoyed it sitting with The Dark Lord, juice running down our chins. He's a teen, he simply had to act blase, but even he admitted it was delicious. The peaches were that much tastier for our having biked a few miles to buy them. We ended up taking a big bag home and making a pie.

My boys are being unusually sweet and agreeable. Dare I even say...helpful? It's quite wonderful.

Yes, I've lost a good friend, but I am re-discovering others and that's a wonderful thing.

A long lost member of our knitting circle is closing down her yarn store and giving everything away. Everything. I did my part in helping her liquidate and I have yarn for years and years of projects. I have long dreamed of making my first sweater for myself out of this in plum and I am now the owner of 18 balls!

We headed to the beach over the weekend expecting the usual cool weather and overcast skies typical of the Oregon Coast. Instead, we had brilliant sunshine, warm breezes, and hundreds upon hundreds of pelicans. It was a perfect day of kites and sandcastles, shells and tidepools. No one argued and no one snarked until dinner (which really was truly snarkworthy--why bother starting up a restaurant of you're just going to serve nasty food but I digress...) . We'd planned a beach trip the weekend before but it was rather abruptly canceled due to fraternal squabbling so this peaceful, sunny day was a rare pleasure.

I tell you, when you're flying a kite, everything looks good!

When I'm Right......

My husband is a very good person. He is a wonderful husband and father, which is not news to anyone who knows him. But he's also committed to the rest of his family. When word came down that his grandmother was about to celebrate her 94th birthday and neither his father nor his brother could attend the festivities, my dear husband made plans to travel to Oklahoma City for 4 days. I think the weather alone at the end of July would probably kill me, but he's clearly stronger than I am.

We dropped him off at the airport yesterday and then couldn't resist a peek at our fair city's celebrated newcomer nearby. You'd think we were hosting the Olympics or something. We went, we bought a few things to make our home more streamlined and Swedish (as if!) and it was a scene but now we can say we've been. Those folks do have a way with color and I fell in love with some of the fabrics by the yard, so I may well make the trek again one day. What I cannot understand is why, when one covers the entire the entire 280,000sf store and finally makes it through checkout and to the exit, there is no conveniently placed coffee cart outside the door. I think I would have willingly paid $10 for an iced Americano at that point to prop me up for the long journey back to our car. The boys were calling it "the IKEA death march".

All I could think of at that point was water and shade. We had an errand to run downtown and I decided to take the kids to one of my favorite childhood spots. The Lovejoy Fountain is tucked away in a part of Portland where the former shtetl was flattened by 1960's urban renewal. It was a spot I loved as a kid--there's water, of course, but it's also a space where one can scale heights, rest near a tranquil pool, get splashed by rushing water, and (not to be missed) float one's Crocs from top to bottom. The boys kvetched on the way there of course, assuming that the fountain would be dull. Our brief stopped turned out to last much of the afternoon. All the kids got soaked, the pigeons got a lot of mediocre Swedish oat crisps, and everyone was happy (except The Spouse who was stuck all afternoon in the Salt Lake City airport, poor fellow). I love it when my hunches are correct!
We picked up some Indian takeout and came home to fill out the meal with homemade naan, pakoras, mango lassi, and carrot halvah and spent the evening watching Lagaan, the best 4 hour anti-imperialist Bollywood cricket film you could ever hope to see!

Getaway

We've just returned from a few days visiting family in Anacortes. We made plans thinking The Spouse would need to work and that I would be driving the kids up there alone but, happily, he ended up free this week so we could all go together.

We drove north through gray skies and occasional drizzle but the sky grew clearer as we headed west off the interstate towards the sea. We were welcomed with multi-recipient birthday celebration (all our birthdays fall between May and August) which included two lovely bakery cakes and a generous amount of spending money for the kids.My aunt's house is on a hill overlooking the state ferry terminal and the westernmost San Juan islands. It's a lovely location and we were blessed with mild, sunny weather while there. We spent one day wandering around the town of Anacortes. We walked through the lovely city park and took in the views. It's pretty much all about the water and the boats, both of which proved endlessly fascinating. We also managed to find both the yarn shop and a lovely bookstore.

We spent another day visiting Friday Harbor on San Juan Island which allowed for an hour of ferry time each way. The ferries seem so grand to me--they're spacious and comfortable and you can wander freely at different levels. We traveled on a gloriously sunny day, but I think it would be wonderful to spend a stormy wintry day on the ferry as well, with some friends, perhaps, and a hot cup of coffee and some knitting. It sounds perfect to me.

That's The Dark Lord and me in the photo above, with our shadows on the water. Pretty cool shot, I think.
Friday Harbor was lovely as well. We had an OK lunch, visited more bookstores, ate ice cream, wandered about and enjoyed ourselves quite a bit.

We left fairly early yesterday and made a stop at a produce stand in Mt Vernon where we bought some of the best cherries I've ever eaten. I'm deep into reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle right now and was happy to shell out a small fortune for the locally grown fruit. We arrived home to find all the cats well fed and happy to see us.

I spent a great deal of time on this vacation doing...nothing, really. Reading, knitting, taking photos, and not much more than that. What luxury! I'm trying to hang on to that vacation vibe before gearing up to think about the rapidly approaching summer term.

A First!

Way back in the pre-parenting dark ages I developed a sudden interest in birding. It was as if a switch had been flipped and I suddenly started seeing all the birds around me and actually caring what they were. I think it's a family thing as all the women on my mom's side of the family know (or knew) their birds and knew them well. I purchased a number of reference books and pored over them, absorbing information about habitat and calls. I remember dreaming about birds at various times. I had a pretty good life list going back then but it all came to a screeching halt once kids entered my life as they really aren't the best birding companions.

We took a trip with friends to Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge today and it was a birder's paradise with marshy areas, open water, grasslands, and forest. Amazingly, I even remembered to bring along my binoculars and a field guide. We saw all kinds of things: herons, egrets, doves, swallows, flycatchers, and more. But when a large brown bird took off from the cattails, I was stumped. The boys had run ahead with the field guide so it took me a while to look it up and, lo and behold, it was one of these:The American Bittern is not particularly rare, but they're shy and not easy to spot. They always looked so endearing in the bird books as they are usually shown holding their bills aloft in an attempt to look like pond grass. I'd never thought about what they might look like flying, but there was no doubt that's what I'd seen. This was a bird I'd always wanted to see so it felt like quite a triumph once I identified it.
Our outing was lovely. No rain, but no hot sun, either. At 4.2 miles, the walk turned out to be just a bit longer than the 1.5 we'd planned on, but we started out in the wrong place and by the time we realized our error we were far enough along the trail that it made no sense to go back. The kids whined and I ended up carrying The Princess for the last of it, but it was a fine spring outing nonetheless.