unexpected yum

There are things that I unexpectedly like: for example, recently I discovered that I love green onions. I love them. I want to eat them every day. So I do, because I can.

Yesterday I stuck them in my tuna avocado (which I wrote another post about). Just my tuna avocado salad, because I rarely eat sandwiches anymore. (It's not a conscious thing, it's a listening to my body thing, but that's another post for another day.) The combination was delicious.

The summer I lived at Grandma and Grandpa's house, JT and I had an onion adventure. There were green onions growing that were three feet high. I wonder how yummy they would have tasted, if I had been brave enough to try them.

People who know me also know that I love cucumber soda, by Dry. Mixed with strawberry lemonade or by itself, it's probably my favorite drink besides water. Definitely, it's my favorite "treat" drink. A visiting teacher once gave me a bottle of it. I wondered if it was some sort of sick joke, but I stuck it in the fridge anyway and then one time I was really wanting something and it was pretty much the only thing in the fridge. So I drank it. I'm sure my face contorted, but I kept drinking it, and by the end of the bottle, I guess you could say I had been converted.

Yay green onions. Yay cucumber soda. Yay all sorts of other good things that I haven't discovered yet. Yay to yummy things.

sidekick vs psychic

One of my dearest friends in this whole world took me on an adventure in the boonies of Oregon. I have to say, since it was on the west side of the mountains, at least they were pretty boonies and not all dried up. I mean, dried up has its pretty moments, but as someone who grew up in a desert, I really do appreciate the green. This picture was taken in February.

Peeks took me to see her brother and his family. They were warm and generous and fed me yummy dinner. It was also quite entertaining, as they have six kids under nine years old. It took me a few minutes just to be able to sort out their names. One of the little boys obviously had a crush on me. Haha. I remember those days.

Anyway. My friendship with Peeks has taught me something that I knew in my heart, but that I had never consciously realized. When you love someone fully, you love all parts of them. I don't mean that you love everything they do, or that you are happy all the time. What I mean is that to love someone, to really let them in, is a choice, and you have to choose to put all your chips in the pot. No ante-ing up anymore. Go big, or go home. No reservations.

I've never met anyone like Peeks. She draws people to her. I've never met anybody who didn't like her. She's fun and fun-loving. She's generous and kind. She is concerned about how other people feel, and goes out of her way to make people comfortable. She's insightful and curious, and loves adventures and to make people laugh. She's had a lot of hard things happen to her in her life, and a lot of challenges, but she can almost always find something to laugh about. She's a great listener. When she's with you, she's really with you. She's not playing on her phone, or thinking about something else, or wishing she was somewhere else. She gets wrapped up in the moment and totally loses track of time. This is wonderful when you are the person she's with. When you're the person who's next in line for her attention, it's not always so easy to love that quality about her, and one time, when I was in that position -- the position of being Next on her list, I got really frustrated because I felt like I really needed her and she was putting someone else first. For hours. And I needed her! I needed her badly. I was out of joint for awhile, but then, as I was waiting, and waiting, and what felt like waiting more, I realized that she had been there for me many, many times. And probably, for some of those times, someone else was waiting for her, like I was waiting for her at that moment. And that probably other people had been frustrated because I literally hogged all her time.

In that moment of frustration and irritation, I told myself, "you love her. You love this dear Peeks of yours. Yes, you're upset about this. Yes, you wish she would just get here already. But think about how often she has been there for you, when you needed it most; listened to you, when her back was aching; taken time to love you when she probably really would have rather been in bed." And that's when I realized that I could be mad, or I could be loving. If I was going to really love her, I needed to love that quality about her, and accept that she wasn't always going to be there at exactly the time when I wanted her, because she was probably off helping some other person feel good about themselves. I needed to appreciate her for her ability to heal people. In short, I needed to love her wholeheartedly in spite of this one attribute that was so beautiful when I had access to it, but was so annoying when I wanted it and couldn't have immediate gratification, even if we had planned for me to have gratification at a certain time and location, and the agreed upon time had passed.

Once I accepted this, I felt lots better. I was more patient. I tried to consider all the other people that she was helping, who needed her, whether they realized it in the moment or not. Because she's a beautiful person, inside and out. She cares and loves with everything that's in her. I decided I wanted to be more like her in that way -- the way of truly looking outside yourself and listening closely.

Peeks and I are kindred spirits. I tell people I'm her sidekick. Apparently I need to learn to enunciate, because people always think I'm saying, "I'm PK's psychic" instead of "I'm PK's sidekick."  We were fast friends from almost the moment that we met...we had an instant bond. She helped me through a lot of things I was going through, without being judgmental. She listened, and she loved. (With me, those two often go hand in hand.)

Loving fully isn't always easy. But I've learned that sometimes you just choose to love someone, and then when your choice is made, you stick with it, no matter what, even when things aren't always easy. As long as you know they love you back and they'll be there for you when you really, really need them, people's true love can see you through ups and downs in relationships.

Love is a beautiful thing. It's a choice. It's a blessing. It is real, and it is a gift. It's not always easy, but practicing real love - love that is kind, unfeigned, unsarcastic, and true - is one of the most satisfying things you can choose to partake of. I knew this about family members, and other people in my life, but I never really realized how much of it was up to me until I met Peeks. So thank you, lovely lady, for showing me one more way to have happiness in my life.

family time in late spring

My sister and her family came to stay with me for a weekend a couple of weekends ago. The weather was lovely, and we had a great time.

On Friday, we went to the water and hung around. We had a great time splashing about. The kids waded, and I dipped my toes in. There were ducks with purple iridescent heads and lots of little kids running around. The sun was hot and the water was cold.

We went out for Chinese, which was actually really good -- lots of different tastes. But then one of my least favorite dining experiences happened: they literally forgot about us at the end. I kept trying to catch the waitress' eye and almost went over and said something. It's true that they were really busy, but it was ridiculous how long we sat there. I felt like it was long enough that they should have been paying *me* and I completely did not succeed in enjoying the moment and not being bugged by it, as you can see evidence of, unfortunately.

After reading Scrambled Eggs Super, we went to bed, and didn't get up until the next morning, when we had eggs and bacon and blueberries with our Cheerios. Then we all trundled into the car and went to the waterfall. The kids didn't really want to go, but I think they were glad they went in the end. We had a good time taking pictures and found at least six different kinds of berries on the way down.

The waterfall is beautiful. The last time I was there, it was in September, and it had a very different feel. Also, we couldn't walk down the little path, because it was closed. But it was a good time, and I'm glad we went.

Here are some family photos (above) and some photos of the waterfall (below). The spray was nice and cool, and there was actually a double-rainbow, but the camera lens doesn't pick it up very well. The elevation of the falls is approximately 270'.

I wondered how old the tree that got stuck at the top was before it got sent down the river. Then I wondered if they put it there on purpose, as, if you look closely, it appears that the tree is being held up by the electrical wires. I dismissed that idea, and then set about trying to determine how tall the tree was, but my proportional geometry failed me and I said "big enough" and gave up.

Later, after lunch at a cafe, in which I determined that it is better to get a hamburger or breakfast at a family diner/cafe instead of Asian-inspired salad (one would think I would not have had to learn this lesson, but apparently my desire to believe in diner salads hasn't yet been sufficiently quashed), we played Pandemic a couple of times and then, after Princess Furball, we went to bed. It makes me glad that my friends and I have hauled all my picture books everywhere...now I can share them with the people I love. :)

birds, not on wires

On a recent walk I took with my sister, who I have nicknamed after a bird, I saw a couple of birds that I have never seen before. One was black, one was brown. One was alive, the other was dead. Sometimes you can slow down and notice mundane things when you're with people you love. I knew the general type of one of the birds (the dead one, which was clearly an owl, even to the untrained eye), but I had no clue on the other. There were a couple of the black-red-orange birds hanging out on some cattails, but the owl was solitary. It was strange; the owl must have died fairly recently. He (she?) was right under a telephone wire, just next to a phone, so I wondered if maybe he had been on a wire and gotten electrocuted, or something. But the body hadn't decomposed at all - for which I was grateful - but the body seemed really awkward. By the way, owls have ginormous talons. Just saying. You can't see them well in this shot, but they're there, and if I were a mouse, I would have trembled in terror.

Here's the black bird in action.

I think as I get older, I'm changing. I used to hate birds. HATE them. With an intense and gloriously-fire-hot passion. But now I kind of admire them. (Except crows...shudder. The other day, I saw an entire murder of them. We're talking, fifty of the things in one tree, caw-ing up a macabre to-do. It was uber creepy, I'm not going to lie.) They have to try to hard to adapt in this crazy world we live in. They find interesting hiding places and manage to hide from cats and humans and other birds and airplanes and snakes and all other sorts of bird-eating things. So really, it's amazing that there are any left at all. Except pigeons and crows. One species seems too dumb to die out and the other seems too smart to allow itself to become trapped.

*And how about I throw in a random picture of a beautiful moon on a beautiful warm night in central Washington to round things off?

exhibit favorites

A couple of months ago I went to the art museum to see an exhibit about masters in Venice. It was actually pretty cool, and had some of the works of art that I studied back in AP Art History on display, in addition to some really cool ancient instruments. Like a giant sax/bassoon thing that curved in a million places like a snake but was wood. And ancient clavichords. And other such things.



There were some pretty cool pictures there, too. Here are a few of my favorites. The one with the cow-looking creature that I'm pointing to is, I believe, actually called "The Ox" and it's by Van Gogh. It's a little creepy in person, I suppose, because everything looks a little dingy and hopeless in the shading, but you all know how I feel about paintings with cows in them.

The one at the top left is St. Mark's in Venice, by Canaletto, I think. The landscape is beautiful, and also has the requisite cow in it, if you look hard enough. And the last one, I don't know who did it, but I loved the light. It seemed like it was early morning, and maybe the one sister was catching fish for breakfast and the other is keeping her company as she reads her book. I was struck by the relaxed nature of the painting, and kind of longed for days when we were smart-phone and technology free and the biggest thing to do in the morning was go down to the river and fish for awhile. I realize that life has other problems that come with it, but it just seemed so relaxed, and a time where people moved more slowly and appreciated smaller things in life, and really valued conversation and relationships--maybe because back then, most people didn't have a whole lot of things and didn't really have an expectation that material goods would come their way, so they didn't let it interfere. Maybe I'm just making stuff up. Either way, these paintings were beautiful to see, and if you're ever in Portland, you should go see them. The Canaletto won't be there, but the rest are part of the permanent collection.

cloudy day

I went out with a friend on a cloudy day recently. I should note that I have learned my lesson, and I always wear sunglasses on the cloudy summer days, because the light is that much harder on my eyes then.

We went on an adventure; we went somewhere that neither of us had ever been before: Bainbridge Island.

I had heard that Mora's was the place to go for ice cream, and that it was worth the ferry ride over just to have the delectable deliciousness that is their locally made ice cream.

Most everything that is in the ice cream is from the island...the cows that the cream came from, and the blackberries in the "mora" (that's what they call the blackberry flavored ice cream...which is delicious, of course).

It took awhile before we actually got to Mora's. It involved a really long stop at a subpar cafe (mostly labeled such because it took almost 40 minutes for them to bring us a sandwich).

The ferry ride is worth it for the view alone.

This is the city that I love. :)