The "week" in review

Hood river whiskey stop

You know how you put something off and then you've put it off for so long that you think, why even bother with it it's been so long? Yeah, I was almost there. But I like talking to myself in the cloud(s), and was recently inspired by a friend's photo a day project to at the very least keep allow myself a small view of the present. I spent a bit of time strolling back through some of my jottings from the last decade and was reminded of things I may have otherwise forgotten and of things I wish I could forget.

We got back from Cuba and classes started again. That sort of explains things. But I did more than teach, write, and read these last 6 months (6 months!#@%$)...

We went wine tasting, hiking, took up some space to grow things for the squirrels to eat, some traveling happened, I made soap, backpacking on the AT, we sold a house, we bought a house (...in 30 days), baseball, hung out with friends, and we got to know the first state a little better.

We also spent a lot of time reading (for work and play) and unsuccessfully keeping the cats out/off of things...

subversive fire (not allowed in rental housing)

Birthday seafood outing

clever

flight of whites, flight of reds

Joe holds a bee

Pocket finds comfort

Shoulder kitty, Risa style (read: wobblier)

spring garden

Pallet garden

Whiskey in wine central...

"alcohol receiver"

my favorite place to be in Hood River

Ariana to the beach!

Frisbee at the beach

Reduce Food Waste

This is a really interesting ad campaign that was all over the city. It's for the new city-wide residential composting in the Bay area. I mostly took this picture for my food class, because we talk about different sites of food waste in the larger system--something that has become a big topic of discussion recently.

Again, Pocket finds comfort

We went to a wedding that brought many of our west coast peeps to our neck of the woods--it was rather odd, and I kept having to check myself, realizing we weren't on the west coast. We had some time to wander about ahead of the wedding and so we checked out the capitol, walked the aqueduct, and took in some street art and enjoyed a beer. It was a lovely wedding. We drove home by way of a winery we'd been to a over a decade ago. We really liked the style of the production facility and the gravity feed set-up. Sadly it's become rather commercialized.

pre-wedding shenanigans and west meets east

At the Aqueduct in Richmond

Muddy flood in Charlottesville

 

In Richmond

Pocket makes his own space

I also went to Arizona to meet my new nephew and hang out with my mom. We lounged around with the baby, I got way overexcited shopping for baby items and we generally just had a nice time. We made our way north for a couple days and enjoyed the beautiful landscape.

Also, we made soap, lotion, and chapstick...and I'm pretty sure my life has changed forever. I made my own laundry detergent the other day. I want to go to Greece and make Olive oil soap (I bought Greek travel books and have convinced fellow travelers to go....this is totally happening next summer).

Sedona

Sedona selfie

Mason!

Rose, Calendula, and pumpkin tea soap

Lotion

Seriously Pocket....

  

see how our garden grows...and feeds the local squirrel population

Major League!

post-AT backpacking...car camping relaxation, complete with cooler!

west meets east part 2

Minor Leagues!

"hiking" in the state park

Shadows in the grass

Scary Catch...on the kitchen cupboards

And stairs

I didn't mention that this house has stairs. This is, in fact, the first house we have lived in to have stairs. This may not seem like a particularly interesting detail, but when your sense of scale (around the house) changes things start to feel very far away. Seriously, leaving things upstairs is my new nemesis.

Also, Risa has seen stairs and dealt with them at my parents place, for Pocket and Catch this was a first. I desperately wish that I had video of Pocket's first attempt down the stairs--human toddlers are more daring. Not to mention that we started them at the top of the stairs (having closed them in a small room while we moved in) and it took both of the boys the entire day to work up the courage to head downstairs. For Catch, food did the trick, but Pocket resisted even being carried down the stairs. So you can imagine that watching him sit at the top of the stairs and consider them for some hours and then finally take the plunge, making sure to put each paw on each step before proceeding was quite the event.

Onward...

Catch: "WTF"

We sold a house. We packed. We scared the living daylights out of the cats pretty much everyday. Our last two days in the house I work up to this:

I have less of the pillow than he does

Cats huddled all around me, head to toe--perhaps they were afraid we would leave them? Perhaps we were afraid we would leave them? mwahahahahahaha

Joe and I packed the truck in 12 hours (mostly). I channeled my inner dentist (if you know my Dad you will get that joke) and per self-review "was surgical with this shit." I took all our mismatched boxes and found the perfect! home for them.

damn we're in a tight spot?

Joe jigsaw puzzled the furniture

We had excellent help for driving across the country...

Enjoying our last meal to not come from a cooler

...and drive we did. I took exactly one picture of my view, which was pretty steady for the most part, not WY though, WY was stunning)--we did OR to WY on the first day, WY to NE on the second, NE to IN on the third and IN to DE on the last day:

Bug splats and all

Blake and Joe had charge of the cats in the pick-up (saints these men, or demigods) and I drove the moving truck and the trailer (it felt like driving the 12-passenger van for my field class...really really, plus I've done this before--a few times). 

The catmobile

it's longer than it looks...

I had a lot of time to reflect on leaving the place that has really become our favorite. I kept my shit together for exactly 30 minutes of the first day. I had music blaring, the window down, and the whole of the high desert filling up my windows. But after a little bit, the full weight of leaving this place hit me. Maybe it was seeing the mountains in the rear view mirror. And I know we'll be back, maybe not on a permanent basis, but you can't keep me away from that skyline. Some prefer the skyscrapers, I prefer the peaks.

I also decided to claim the PacNW as home, or at the very least as where I'm from when people ask me. Usually I just tell people I'm not from anywhere (which surprisingly goes very poorly for the conversation). I just haven't stayed very long in any of the places I've lived--this of course can be measured at different scales (houses/schools/cities/states/countries), but I grew up a wanderer as part of a military family and it just stuck to me. I view this as a positive thing--I've rarely felt that I couldn't go somewhere or not achieve a goal because of distance. But now I also feel ready to settle down. I know we're not going to just yet (rental housing for one, partnership for the other), but, for example, I am ready to buy pieces of furniture with a specific room in mind, or knowing that I might not have to move it again...despite my many moves I seem to have excellent amnesia about how much packing and unpacking sucks. Or maybe it's just the excitement of a new place that balances it out...

At a rest area on day 1

The drive was, as expected, exhausting. To drive across with minimal stops in four days would tire anybody out, but we did it. In fact I can put it in writing now, since we're here...as far as the "on the road" piece goes, this was the smoothest trip I've done across country (and I've done 9--4 of them as an adult). No traffic, minimal disruption from construction, no accidents, no major roadblocks of any kind. We made it to each of the hotels that I reserved each night, we lost nary a cat, and aside from my spectacular skills with a truck and trailer had very few issues. As an aside, I can now include "backing up 200 feet with car trailer" as part of my skill set (may or may not include furious cursing). At least we didn't have to take the car off (again).

I also have to say (because there has not been enough cat-talk in these posts--cue eye roll) that the cats were not total asshats in the hotels. Which is kind of important, since we needed sleep and energy for the drive the next day, and they needed to shut the hell up and sleep the whole time...catlife is sooooo hard.

Pocket as overlord of the room

We rolled into town on evening #4, picked up our keys on the morning of the 5th day and unpacked the truck (it was very very very hot) in a few hours. Some things took some serious finagling to get into the house--our oversized couch for one, and moving the kegerator (gregerator) is always a delight.

New (old) house!

Our house was built in the 1930s and has had a hodgepodge of updating. So far we all (cats included) love the sun porch, and are trying to figure out how to tolerate the dollhouse-like nature of the upstairs--either people were not tall, or they cared less about hitting their heads all the time in the 1930s.