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. :)

Costco-Time

Being low on gas means that it's time to go to Costco. I like going to Costco. You never know what you're going to find. The thing about the Costco location I go to now, though, is that it's always a madhouse. Always. Even at 7:30, it was still a circus to find a parking spot. And I'm always in the minority: about 30% of the people there were Indian; another 30%, Asian, 15% were single twentythirtysomethings, and the other 5% were old ladies.

Today, when I went, I thought to myself, "It must be summertime at Costco," because berries, swimsuits, fans, watermelon, papaya, tents, hammocks, and juice popsicles dominate the shelf/pallet space.

And it must be summertime because a large clamshell of grapes, a fan, some sunscreen, some potato chips, and (if they had been there) some mini frozen cream puffs would have ended up in my cart as well. Do I need 4 lbs of grapes with which to feed myself? No. Do I need 2 lbs of potato chips? No. But it's summertime at Costco, so I just couldn't help myself.

At least I managed to control myself enough to refrain from purchasing a tent or an inflatable kayak.

one letter

A bit ago, I posted about one line. Now, I'm posting about one letter.

Throughout the day, I spend a lot of time reading. It's part of my job and it's part of my fun. I read fb posts and legal documents and lame yahoo articles and sports scores and classics and cream puffs and nonfiction. I read price signs and traffic signs and bills and emails.

Just one letter can make a difference.

For example, today alone, I found the following one letter errors:

Pubic affairs meeting, tonight, 7pm.
Deprecation totaled $9,285,332 for the year 2013.
Here we are with some of our closet friends. Only the Huberts were missing!
For sale: trinkets, clothing, and housewars.

Facepalm.

Letters do matter. Just one can make a whole sentence just sound awful, or bring the hilarity factor to the table when it really doesn't need to be there.

avocados & bad seuss

About a year ago, I was introduced to the idea of using avocados in everything instead of mayo. Yay, grocery store marketing campaign: it worked, and now I'm hooked. No more mayo for me! I use avocados in deviled eggs. It tastes yum, and you can almost go back to your Green Eggs and Ham days if you want...yes, it does tinge them a bit, but I promise, the shade is not as bad as that of the pale green pants with nobody inside them.

Today I tried it with my tuna fish. It was too hot to cook anything, and I wanted more protein than just the avocado by itself would provide. It did look like someone had messed up one fish two fish, but it was actually really good...just need to remember to put some more spices in next time, and it will be epic!

Avocados are good. I'm a believer. Too bad they're so dang expensive. I bought a bunch at the cinco de mayo sale though, and mom told me to let them ripen and then stick them in the fridge and they'll keep, and it's worked like a charm. Hail avocados! Down with mayonnaise!

scrappy books

When I was about 14, I went through a phase where I would listen to basketball games while I scrapbooked. I would have watched them, but access to a tv was sometimes difficult to get, and so I would just do random scrapbook things while I listened. I didn't go all-out...that's not really my style, especially when I didn't really have any money, and my mom wasn't into scrapbooking, so I made do with the minimalist gear I had. 

That's probably why there's more stuff in those scrapbooks than in any other years...the time between when I was 14-16. Seems like I just had a lot of energy and time back then...

But last night, I was scrapbooking. I was, admittedly, feeling a little sorry for myself that I didn't have anything to do on Saturday night. I thought, well, it's been awhile since I scrapbooked, and it's way better to do something useful than to sit around and mope.

And you know what...it was a good thing. Every picture I was in meant someone cared enough about me to stop to take a photo. I wasn't much into taking photos for the first few years of my life. I came across some really funny pictures, though...and some that made my heart squeeze a little.

I found one of my cousins and their mom, 20 years ago. It hurt my heart that 2 of the 4 people in the picture are no longer alive. I found a whole section of pictures I took of my sister and her fiancé ten years ago. They both looked so happy...theirs was a beautiful marriage, cut too short by Evil Nemesis Cancer. 

I found some of my cousins...I used to spend more time with them, but I bet it's been almost 10 years since I've seen the majority of the cousins on my mom's side. There was one where the group of cousins that were between 3-5 years older than I was were all posing, and it made me laugh. The thing about scrapbooking is that it brings back memories. I couldn't help myself from editorializing as I went through the pictures. The thing I found myself wishing most is that I had been more diligent about wearing sunscreen. There was one set of pictures I came across...I was either 11 or 12. In all the pictures, I looked extraordinarily red and extraordinarily unhappy. There were some that looked like I had just been crying, and some others with my face seeming bright red, with a forced smile. I didn't remember being really unhappy, but then I think, yep, puberty was no fun...no wonder I looked like that in those pictures. So many feelings, so much angst, so much that I was trying so hard to express. Maybe I tried to express too much...maybe that's why I got so many "extra chores." I should have said, 'Mom, you're stifling my expression!' Haha...yep...that would not have gone my way. :P Not that I mind now, though. I'm grateful that I had experiences that helped me learn how to deal with my emotions. 

I'm so grateful, too. It seems I've gotten prettier as I've gotten older. I really don't think it's that I like myself more now than I did then...it's just that I guess I grew into my features. Most of the boys that liked me back then (assuming there were any...I admit I've kind of forgotten all about that, and I really don't want to dredge up the memories) must have liked me for my winning personality. :) 

It was a night the brought back lots of memories, and made me want to be closer to my family. Which is good, because a sister of mine is going to be moving within driving distance! So now I'll have more family close. Yay for happy memories, and yay for family.

art

In my apartment, I have (on the walls)

1 original painting I did by myself
1 original painting my friends and I collaborated on
3 original coast scenes
1 family picture collage
1 scenic tourism picture collage
2 limited edition prints
1 framed map
1 framed landscape (with the requisite cow, of course)
1 etching that hung in my bedroom when I was a little girl

I look forward to getting a "where the wild things are" print in the future. I would also love a Japanese scroll painting, the kind that have muted blues and greens in them and have mountains, trees, and elegant birds in them. (No people allowed, of course.)

Last night I went to an art walk, where a bunch of galleries stay open a little later than usual and kind of try to work together to sell a lot of art. One of the galleries was having a show of miniatures...most were no bigger than 4"x4". The brush strokes were incredible; for some of the detail, I'm sure that the artist used brushes that were no bigger than five hairs, and there were about 300 of them on the wall. I decided one day it might be cool to have a bunch of miniatures. There were a few that I really liked, and I still may go in and buy one, but I have to think about it. There's only so much wall space in a place, and only so many dollars in my pocket. But it was fun to go and see what's there and know that there is creativity alive and well. Sometimes, I get so bogged down in the every-day that I forget about the beauty of art. But I'm remembering this week!

one line

Sometimes, I think about one line. One line from a play, one line from a text, one line from a book, one line of music.

If you take out the line, how much does it have an effect on the rest of the piece? If you think about it, every sketch is made of a series of lines; every book is made of lines of text, every text message is a line of communication, every spoken word in a play is called a line. One line is all you need to connect one thing to another. It's true that the more lines you have connecting two things, the tighter they're linked, and the harder it is to erase the line.

Sometimes, I think, what if one line was left out? Think of your favorite poem, or your favorite song. How different would it be if your favorite line was left out? Would it still be your favorite?

Often, I get a song stuck in my head, and it's one line from that song. If it's a song I don't like, occasionally I wish that the one line would just disappear and that I could forget it entirely. But if that line is the "backbone" of the song, or the point of the poem, or the first words in a conversation with that really cute person you've been trying to get your nerve up to talk to for ages now, or "I love you," then it seems like the one line, that one connection, isn't just one line. It's more than one line. 

I was thinking, if you picked a line from a book, any line, and took it out, the chances of it mattering are pretty slim. You would have lots of other lines of text to give you information and context. But in a sonnet, taking out one line would make an entirely different poem. And in a haiku, one line missing ruins the structure completely.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that every line matters. Every decision, every connection, every day matters. Yes, you might just think of it as one line of text in a life, or one measure of music in a song, and that it's ok because you have context and other lines to back it up and give context. But sometimes, if you have a limited number of pencil strokes, or lines, in the painting of your life, it seems to me that it's important to keep tracing over the lines that you want to really stand out, so they won't fade. 

If you leave one line out, then how do you know?

I was thinking about this in church as I was singing a hymn. And then as we stopped singing, I thought of the first poem I ever worked at memorizing. I was in fourth grade, and I still remember most of it. It's the one about the roads diverged in the yellow wood. The last line says, "And I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." Even if you claimed that "and that has made all the difference is actually a second line, if you took either one of them out, the poem would not be nearly as impactful. The person in the poem drew a lonely line that probably went in a roundabout way, but realized that he/she would never get back to that exact place, time, and situation...so even if the exact intersection was visited multiple times, it would never be the same. 

Every. Line. Counts.

Golden Gardens

Tonight I went to Golden Gardens, at the suggestion of The Conrad, who sadly wasn't actually there with me. The weather was beautiful, and although it was a little late by the time we actually got there, it was still gorgeous. I didn't even need a jacket until 8:15!

Even though The Conrad was stuck at work, Ronnster and RoJo and others were there with me. I burned my accounting book in effigy. It took a long time to burn. That class took a long way to burn itself out of my system, too.

We sat on the beach, and made some s'mores. (I had 0.5, which was 0.5 too much.) We talked and laughed and sang. And there were hugs. And trains in the background. And the whooshing of the tide as it crept in. And a ukelele. And I wore my sweatshirt, my "bonfire" sweatshirt...the one I never wear  unless it's a bonfire. I wash it every time, afterwards, but I'm sure it still has bonfire smell embedded in it.

It was lovely, and I loved seeing my friends, getting hugs, and laughing so much.

Cheers to friends. Cheers to summer. Cheers to no more accounting book.