huh?

I walked the walk for 2.5 hours today, with Inti. We did the loop up here in the neighborhood, just to check out what's going on, to pass the lovely garden with the cute sign that reads

over one million deer served

and then to scope out what's blooming and in what light. I keep forgetting to bring my compass, though, so I'm not learning all that much, except that I most definitely want to plant that wild lilac. After the loop, instead of coming home, we plodded on down to the beach. I've learned that my hiking boots work much better for me on the steep downhill terrain than my walking shoes - mostly in protecting my toes from becoming squished into the end of the shoe. Anyway, once on the beach we enjoyed low tide mostly to ourselves, until we met up with a young couple and their bull dog, Fat Boy Cooper.

Yep. That's his name. Fat Boy Cooper. He was a gorgeous and typy red brindle and white with chunky, stocky legs, a neck as thick as a tree trunk and a choking snort that would wake the dead. And he liked to swim. Swim. The owner had hip waders that she pulled on, and then she walked out into the bay. She had a few pockets full of rocks. Fat Boy doesn't like balls - he would rather chase rocks. I'm impressed by all this, of course. This was a huge, 5-year-old bull dog, jumping around like a Jack Russell Terrier, and swimming. Swimming!

Okay, the truth will out. He wasn't actually swimming. He was barreling along in the water, which was up to his shoulders, running with his back feet and dog paddling with the front. Fat Boy was cruising, at a speed that I think would rival my sister's hunting lab's powerful strokes. Fat Boy was sixty pounds of exuberant horsepower stuffed in a thirty pound hide.

And here's the kicker. He doesn't like to be in water over his head, because he sinks. However, he will actually swim in deep water all day if he's wearing his custom-made life vest. This I will have to see, sometime later this summer. I wonder if he wears goggles and fins?

awry

Not only did I not kick sand over the clam-shell plea, I went back today to see if it was still there. I knew better, of course. The tide did its work last night. However, someone had written the following in the sand today:

I'M SAWY LD. FOrGIVE ME?

Now, I thought the babytalk way of writing sorry was sowwy. Silly me.

And I'm imagining the entire teenage population in this community (to likely measure in the tens) uses the beach to communicate, when they don't want Mom & Dad to know what's going on.

for a date

JESSIE,
PrOM
WITH ME?
LOVE,
DAVID

Written in long clam-shell letters on the beach at the point, tonight.

looking back

Okay, so by now you all know how bored I am, stranded here in paradise with hobbitt in NJ at the Wildwoods International Kite Festival and Chili Cook-off. I'm kidding about the chili part, and you probably didn't need an entry form but in any case, it's too late for you to enter so don't worry about it.

My little sister has been calling several times a day from her camp in Maine, knowing that I'm alone and doing her best to keep me company. My brother called today, as did my older sister, just returned from attending a wedding in Florida.

In between all these telephone calls I've managed to clean the bathrooms and kitchen; do some laundry; run to the hardware store for toilet seat bumpers, string and valve stem covers; take Inti for a walk at Kah Tai Nature Park until the mosquitoes drove us out, so we came back here for a long walk on the beach. I've sketched out my garden plan, and chosen the liquor store I'm going to knock off in order to accomplish said plan. But I'm still lonely and bored. Then I got an email from an anonymous blog commenter, noting that I displayed a piece of her poetry here in February, Feed the Bear. This led me to explore the entire month's worth of blog entries, and I was startled by what I read.

That was a mistake. I didn't remember, particularly, how hard it was to shred all those documents and get our house ready to sell. I didn't realize how much I'm missing my friend Jill and her family. I was surprised by the confident and forthright tone in my writing (actually, the phrases blow-hard and wind-bag came to mind) and the notion that I might actually have been feeling something, or knowing something.

have you seen this?

I'm not sure if I've ever posted pictures of our new home, taken in early February.

Here's the front, cropped badly. I'd take a better one but hobbitt has the camera.



There's nothing wrong with the garage door. I just Photoshopped my ass out of it, poorly. The other person is our realtor.

And a closeup of the entryway, which is pleasing to me.



The narrow window on the left is hobbitt's office. The larger windows on the right are the guest room. Come visit!

the weird on wheels

I just got back from taking Inti for her mid-day walk. It's a short (perhaps 1.5 mile) circuit that ends at the mailbox. A brief part of the walk is out on the main drag, so to speak. An elderly fellow on a scooter (complete with helmet) came tooling towards us and then cut off to head down to the beach. When he turned I noticed that between his legs, on the deck of the scooter, was a smooth fox terrier, leaning appropriately for the turn. It made me smile.

Then just as we turned up Foxfield towards the mailbox, the same fellow came coasting down the hill. There were several cars at the intersection so we stopped and Inti sat. I noticed the old fellow wore goggles. Then I noticed that the dog did, too.

That made me laugh. I have GOT to get this guy's picture.

so stinking bored

I have yet to figure out why I get so stinking bored when hobbitt is away.

Yesterday I vacuumed up the dog hair tumbleweeds and brushed down the dog, finally cleared and cleaned off the dining room table, took Inti for three walks (the last one at dusk down on the beach), cooked my dinner (onion soup and garlic/rosemary focaccia), watched seven or eight concurrent episodes of Law & Order, picked up the mail, finished nine crossword puzzles, and went to the garbage dump with three bags of garbage and one Longaberger basket of recycling (don't start with me - it's a nice basket, probably worth a couple hundred dollars but it suits us best as a recycling bin).

The only thing I must do today is get dog food. And people food, probably, too.

Maybe I'm bored because I don't have someone here to talk to, make lunch for, caress whenever I pass by the office door, and generally cuddle with. Maybe I need to be told what to do. By the above account, yesterday was somewhat productive, regardless. hobbitt takes up a whole lot of space, by his own account. Funny how nothing comes rushing in to fill that void.

because you asked

A little photo montage for you curious types. I highly recommend you not take my feeble photos for the real experience of druid labs pnw. Please come visit!

This is the view of Mt. Baker, enlarged a bit. The ship you see is at the Indian Island Naval munitions depot, which is about 4 miles away.



This is the view of Mt. Rainier east from the beach here. Imagine that if you're looking at Mt. Baker (prominent), Mt. Rainier would be at your 3 or 4 o'clock position. This photo is enlarged a lot. The waterfront you see (Port Hadlock)is about 3 miles away.



This is the view looking east on the beach to the point. The tide is very low.



Taking the dune path to the point instead gives this lovely view. The lagoon is on the right for the length of the walk.



Getting closer to the backwaters between Kala Point and Port Hadlock.



The lagoon empties in these back waters. This gentleman is combing the dry bed for something. There are lots of interesting stones here. Mostly I took his picture so you could see how large some of the tree trunks are.



On the return trip to the parking lot and dock area, we're treated to this view. The sun is in our faces in the evenings on this leg.



As we get closer to the parking area, you can see some of the homes in our community up on the hill.

double the fun

Tonight was not "walk up the hill night" so I drove down to the beach with Inti and a few dozen heavy towels, her tennis ball and the flinger. She swam after the ball for about 45 minutes and never tired. Mt. Baker (10,788 ft., 68 miles from here) was visible behind Indian Island, immense and glorious and I didn't have a camera with me.

When I decided Inti needed to stop swimming, I took her to the playground area and hosed her down with fresh water, and then we went walking down the path to the point to give me some exercise and her some time to dry off. In the distance, above Port Hadlock, I saw some funny, hump-shaped clouds. It took me a few minutes to realize that a) the clouds weren't moving and b) they weren't clouds at all, but Mt. Rainier (14,410 ft., 99 miles from here).

These two volcanoes are 133 miles apart.

That's a first. It totally doesn't suck to live here.

living lightly

I don't know if I mentioned that hobbitt and I have decided, for the time being anyway, not to contract with a garbage pickup company. We've never made much trash in the first place, what with obsessive recycling and composting. It's cheaper here than it was in NJ, but still....

Now I've got my own express lane at the recycling center, which is also where the dump and composting center is. But until we start working on putting up the wall art, I'm pretty much done with the cardboard and packing paper for the moment. I've certainly got a few carloads of nettles to get over to the compost heap there. But as for garbage, well, I'm not anxious to go. First of all, the aroma under the roof there at the transfer station is formidable. Second, it costs a whopping $4.95 just to go over the scales. (We only had a couple of bags of trash the first time we went and didn't have enough weight to need to pay more than the minimum. The cost is $110/ton, which is what, $.055/pound?)

But mostly I don't want to go because it forces me to see the truth about how much trash we make. I mean the collective we, of course, and not exempting hobbitt and me. It's sobering. It's senseless. It's shameful.

And I think that's a useful thing for us. We've never been particularly wasteful, but having to take our own garbage to the dump will pretty much guarantee that we won't be frivolous ever again.

stinging nettles

B. and I whacked nettles today. I say we, but actually B. did the bulk of the work while I mowed the lawn and then started alongside her pulling nettles. We were at the very back of the property, and the nettles were sometimes taller than either of us. We were getting stung pretty bad - I even had welding gloves on. She mentioned that the underside of the sword fern, when it's got red dots on it, is soothing for nettle stings. Well, no kidding! The only part of my forearms and elbows that's NOT on fire is where I rubbed the fern on it.

No worries. It'll all be over by tomorrow, and by nightfall the stinging won't be intense enough to keep me awake.

Anyway, we're mostly finished with the killing part of gardening here. Next week we'll need to make a few trips to the composting center with all this nettle, and then we can start bringing in topsoil and grading the back yard, and planting salal out front, and moving some of the foundation plantings that the builder stuck in. There are three hollies, for example, and even though they're dwarf varieties, they've been planted far too close to the foundation in spots they'll overgrow quickly.

B. hasn't got a lot of experience, but she's a hard worker, has a vision for the yard, has even built, single-handedly, a free-standing stone wall with the local rock, and is excellent company. At $15/hour she's a whole lot cheaper than a landscaper. I'm excited that we'll do this thing together. It'll be fun to spend time this summer with a 21-year-old who seems to enjoy my company as much as I do hers. Well, maybe that's the $15/hour talking, but she's still fun to be around. I don't think hobbitt minds too much, either. She's very blond and has a penchant for sleeveless shirts and definitely has no need yet for a brassiere. Oh yeah. She's eye candy for sure. Eye candy with muscles.

Now, if I could just find somebody with a tax id who will wholesale some shrubs for me, I'll be all set. There will be more than a few English laurels planted along the lot line. We're going to need some privacy screening, and fast. And now, off to a niche hot bath to soothe my aching muscles.

the hill, the beach, the wind

Have I mentioned the hill? No?

It's a half-mile from druid labs pnw downhill to the waterfront. It's steep. This is a pretty sleepy community, so the roadway is seldom busy, and the views at each turn are stunning. A very nice walk, though I do experience a little knee angst. After three weeks, my knees are no longer on fire, so I must be becoming a tad more fit.

Still, there's always the walk back up the hill. It's steep. In fact, the trip back up the hill emphasizes exactly how steep the hill is. The road twists but there are no actual switchbacks. Three steep sections and relatively easy rises in between. hobbitt can walk back up the hill without opening his mouth. I can make it back up the hill with only four stops now.

Between the walk down and the walk up, there is a quiet lagoon (off limits to people and pets), dunes and a long, narrow bayfront beach (with lovely views of the Cascades and Mt. Baker, on clear days) that comes to a point and turns back sharply toward Port Hadlock. At the point there are massive tree trunks washed ashore, bleached, gnarled, hulking. Someone has built a crude shelter between two of these behemoths with smaller driftwood. After the turn at the point, the waters become calmer. It's a nice place to sit on one of those big trees and look to the south west. On clear days the Olympic range lurks, dark, craggy and snow-capped in that direction.

Walking a little farther on this side brings us back to the lagoon. There is a trail through the dunes, past a small stand of trees, through wildflowers and grasses. Eventually we arrive back at the roadway, and the climb back up the hill. Door to door, this is probably about three miles.

Tonight hobbitt and I passed a couple enjoying the sunset (which consists of the light shining on the Cascades to the east or Pete Townsend proper to the northeast) with a bottle of wine. The wind was in their faces (the predominant direction, from what I can tell) and they were cold. After brief greetings, we continued our walk out to the point. Since the tide was high, we had to pick our way over the trees, and we rested for a while looking towards the bridge from Port Hadlock to Indian Island. hobbitt began skipping stones in these calmer waters, and tried to show me how to do it. Alas. I throw like a girl. I'm not quite sure when that happened. Inti got a little peeved with our lingering, and even more peeved that we wouldn't let her swim out to retrieve the stones. Obviously we don't move quickly enough for her, but she's stuck with us, so there you have it. We watch paint dry. We spend an evening skipping stones in the bay. Get used to it.

On our way back through the dune grasses and wildflowers, we came upon another couple walking their Australian shepherd/Rottweiler mix dogs. These were pony-sized brutes, but sweet as the day is long. Inti tolerated them pretty well, only growling once when she was leaning up against hobbitt, who was petting the big boy, Juno. We chatted with the couple for a few minutes, exchanging addresses and plans to visit and talk about gardening, and then we began our walk up the hill.

Tonight we decided to take the trail instead of the road. I was told it wasn't as steep as the roadway, which isn't entirely true: the steep parts are steeper, and mostly steps, but there are longer stretches of relatively even terrain. The path is very narrow, barely wide enough for one. We walked among the flowering salal and native honeysuckles, dark stretches lined with sword ferns, and open areas offering astounding views of the lagoon, beach and beyond.

We were gone for almost two hours tonight on our walk. We had wind, sunshine, water, mountains, friendly encounters, sweet flowers, good exercise, and peace. I can't imagine a better way to end the day, and I do believe this will become our habit.

unsettlement

Learned today that a well-known kite flyer and all around wonderful gal passed away last week of breast cancer. She was perhaps a few years older than I am. I knew she'd been diagnosed some years ago, and I think I knew she'd had a recurrence. Still, the news rocked me. Such news always does.

On top of the rest of the unsettlement that is druid labs PNW, I found myself in the midst of a pity party today. I realize that what needs to be done, NOW, is the feathering of the nest. Without the hearth, so to speak, I cannot feel complete or safe. Having come from a home where things were somewhat "finished" if there is such an animal, and finding myself now in an ongoing work - with workmanship somewhat beneath our standards - leaves me feeling vulnerable and isolated. It's interesting to see how these feelings define themselves over time and many conversations. When what's bugging me becomes clear, then the cure is pretty clear, too.

The carpeting is either filthy or defective. I can worry that the builder will do something about it or I can just say a symbolic fuck you and rip it out and install what will suit us better: hardwood floors in this, hobbitt's office, and a nice pile carpeting with some color in the rest of the house. Hey, the local place is having a zero-interest until 2009 deal right now. Why would I not do it? Cripes, I can even have the freaking dry, colorless tiles in the foyer, kitchen and laundry ripped out and replaced with hardwood for that deal. And I might.

What I'm getting at here is not what we will or won't do to the house. The point is that for a while now I've been thinking that it's someone else's job to make me happy. Duh. Why do I forget that simple, simple and even simpler lesson?

everything must go

I gotta keep working at getting the NJ out of me. Impatience. Especially on the road. Evidently I am the only one who minds doing 20 mph in a 30 mph zone. And there's no reason for me to mind, other than the encoding of living east of the Mississippi. But I've never been good at waiting. I am a woman of action, at least when I'm not sitting on the sofa wondering whether I'm just lazy or have actually had a stroke which makes moving my arms and legs impossible.

Okay, I was feeling that way after having walked the hills here in our community with Inti and hobbitt. I chose poorly - the hill was steep and long. If we'd gone the other way, the hill would have been longer, but not as steep. I tire easily. That has as much to do with poor conditioning as with being supersized. It's changing, just not fast enough.

We've never had a brandy-new home before. We won't do it again, unless we're choosing everything and on top of the process. The things that need doing, or that were cheaped out (and I have to keep reminding myself that we not only downsized in meatspace but also in cashspace) wear on me and make me anxious. And I moved here so that I could stop being anxious. For the most part, this is the case. I no longer wake in the morning holding my body tight, trying to control what will happen, what crisis there will be at the other end of the phone, what unpleasant task needs to be completed today. However, I wake knowing that I'll have to walk around the refrigerator in the middle of the kitchen (at least until Thursday). Not a big deal, but it's like the Chinese water torture after a week or so. I hardly notice it anymore, but my psyche does.

Here's what I need: high-speed internet access. Art up on the walls. The new fridge pushed back into the opening. Landscaping. Window treatments. The closed sale of druid labs east. Replacements for the cracked floor tiles.

Oh, yeah. That'll make everything perfect, she says with her eyes rolling in her head.

dakota

I spoke with Jill yesterday, who was agonizing over being three days late with the birth of her daughter. Walking wasn't inducing labor. Next, she was going to take an ATV ride to bounce her out. Luckily, her neighbors would neither babysit her son nor give her the keys to the quad.

This morning she told me she was going to dance. The only music she could find was Grateful Dead, which is fine, since she's a die-hard Deadhead.

About six this evening her time, she called to tell me the dancing worked. Then about three or four hours later, her husband called with the news: Dakota Rose has arrived. They called me so soon after that they didn't yet know her weight. I'm honored by that. I'm really sad that I missed meeting her. I would have loved to be by Jill's side for the ordeal.

Welcome, Dakota Rose. You have an amazing resilient mother, a devoted and loving father, and the most wonderful brother anyone could imagine. May your days here be filled with the love of your family, the beauty of all that is made, and the company of wise guiding spirits.

dmv

Okay, they don't call it that here. In fact, there's a separate agency for licensing just about everything. We haven't yet taken the written test for the driver license, but we're about to register the vehicles. So I took a drive over to the county auditor's office today to find out what I need to do just that. There was no line. No line.

*shakes head, repeats*

No line.

So I walked in and a young woman behind the counter asked if she could help me. She looked remarkably like Jenny McCarthy, cleavage and all. I asked what papers I needed to register my vehicles. She said, "I need the title if you own the car, or a copy faxed to me by the bank if you're financing, and the mileage. Fill out this form with your name and address, and the make/model and VINs of the cars."

I must have looked like I was stone deaf and dumb as a rock. I didn't need proof of insurance. I didn't need my driver's license, proof of residency, the results of my latest pap smear. I must have been blinking stupidly for a moment or two. She smiled at me, put the papers in my hands, and told me to have a nice day. When I got home sometime later, and arranged for Volvo to fax the title to them, I called back to find out how I'd know if the fax had arrived. The same woman answered the phone on two rings. Two rings.

*shakes head, repeats*

Two rings. A live, breathing, knowledgeable person, at the equivalent of the DMV, two rings. I checked my pulse. I bit down hard on my cheek. Hmmmm. Not dreaming. So I asked my question and the response was, "Well, just give me a call in a day or two and I'll be able to tell you if I got the faxed title."

Okay, by now I should be twitching. But guess what? I'm not. This is the way things are supposed to work. This is the small town environment that I've been wanting, and didn't even know I'd be getting when we moved here.

For those of you waiting for the downside, well, if there is one, it's this: the builder of our home. He didn't bother to have cable brought onto the property. This means it might take 2 weeks for us to get high-speed internet access. Oh, and television, not that I care about that. Done properly, it will require about 20 feet of boring to lay the conduit. At $15/foot. He also didn't have the phone jacks in my office and in our bedroom wired. At all, it seems. Oh, and the opening in the kitchen cabinets for the fridge. Classy! Right now he owes us $200 (for the feature-free dishwasher he'd installed and which would have been too loud for us to remain indoors during its cycle), brickwork for the fireplace, a broken tile in the doorway between the kitchen and the laundry, and if I'm lucky, cleaning for the filthy carpets. This is a brand-new house. He put down plastic runways while the home was showing. Good idea, right? Until you take up the runways, and see how clean the carpet is under the plastic. Not a big deal in the greater scheme of things, but not what I'd expect from a brand-new home.

I'll get over it. The neighbors are frighteningly friendly. As are their pups. And the views are to die for. I promise pictures as soon as we can do the high-speed thing at home. For now, the cyber cafe is about to close.

gallery walk

Yesterday afternoon, in the midst of unpacking my kitchen (the neverending task) our local realtor called to invite hobbitt and me to join her and her husband on this month's gallery walk in downtown Pete Townsend. The first Saturday of every month, many of the galleries stay open with special exhibits (and some of the bakeries and delis, too) and serve hors d'oeuvres and wine.

Now the last thing I wanted to do was stay on my feet, but the option of vacating the premises was too good to pass up. The evening turned out to be sunny and mild and a perfect time to perambulate on the waterfront. We saw some interesting pieces, ate some delicious foods, and enjoyed excellent conversation with Linda and Bob. The buildings downtown are all "vintage" - with the original wavy, bubbly glass in the ample windows, well-worn wooden stairways (a few buildings have elevators and no building is higher than 4 stories - but consider what a flight of stairs means in a vintage building: something like 35 steps), and that wonderful smell of aged wood. It was a lot of climbing and gabbing, and it ended with the four of us getting pizza in this tiny place right on the main drag.

We've seen it in previous visits here, but to me it looked like the place only served at their window, by the slice. Well, upstairs there's a small dining room (perhaps six tables), and the pizzas are cooked downstairs and hauled up by a dumbwaiter which squeaks and squawks as you'd expect from something of its age. The pie was thin-crust, crispy, and excellent, as was the selection of local craft brews and soft drinks.

The evening ended after much lively conversation with an invitation to go sailing sometime this summer with the two of them on their boat.

So I have to ask this question: what universe is this, and who the hell am I? I'm so confused.

I guess we'll stay

I should be continuing the loading of my formidable kitchen. Not formidable in that it's a state-of-the-art kitchen or that I have tons of gourmet (pronounced goor-met around these parts) accessories. Formidable in that I had eight (8) china barrels full of kitchen crap, and also a huge array of cabinets in which to stuff it all. So far, I believe I've unloaded three of the barrels. Hey, the coffee-making materials are all working, and the toaster is plugged in - what else is there to do? Oh yeah, mugs.

Anyway, I just wanted to post a little thing about the rufous hummingbird. At druid labs, we're all about bird-watching, as part of our no-money-fun practice. But no more ruby throats, as back at druid labs midwest and druid labs east. Here, there are Anna's hummingbirds and rufous hummingbirds. Last evening, as we were doing laundry (ah! To sleep in our own bed, in crispy clean sheets!), hobbitt noticed, right outside the laundry window, a hummingbird that had perched in the conifer tree, at eye level.

I thought that was kind of low, but all I know about hummingbirds is related to the ruby throats from the eastern US. Their nests tend to be high (20 feet or so) in the trees. Eh. Maybe it was just perched. Then this morning, hobbitt noticed the bird hovering outside the dining room window. He said it looked brown to him, and lamented that our bird books are packed away somewhere. I pointed out to him that he had an internet connection up and running...

Rufous hummingbirds perch low in conifers in the spring, to stay alee of weather extremes. In summer, they build their nests high in the crowns of deciduous trees, to take advantage of the evaporative, transpiration (yeah, it's redundant, get over it) cooling effect of the leaves.

Looks like we got ourselves a rufous nest right outside our laundry window. Either that, or it's hobbitt's way of making me do housework.

spruce goose

Wow. I can't say enough about those movers. They were worth every darn cent I paid. Well, not really. It was an awful lot of money. But the move, on the whole, was a very good experience. When all the boxes, bins, furniture and detritus had been loaded into our house or garage from the trailer, hobbitt and I found ourselves to be staggeringly tired and hungry. It was almost 3 p.m. What to do?

We decided to go to the Spruce Goose Cafe for lunch. It's a lovely little cafe at the Jefferson County International Airport, which is just over the hill from our community. (I'll have to post a picture of the long-term parking lot at the airport. I don't think they mow it very often.) The cafe is near the gas pump, self serve. Yeah, go figure. You can drive your plane right up, and they even have a ladder there for your convenience. You can tie your dog up, too, while you gas up the plane. The terminal for the charter company (flights to Seattle, Vancouver Island and the San Juans, hence, international) is a park bench with a roof. I don't know about the security arrangements.

Anyway, the denizens of the cafe are generally geriatric, and colorful. Several older men were playing some sort of dice game (for dollar bills) with the waiter behind the counter. Another older couple came in asking "Do you have pie?" A fellow who'd just gassed up his plane, and who then re-tied his spaniel puppy up on the porch of the cafe, came in for lunch. I guess pushing the plane back while steering with the rod attached to the front wheel worked up a hunger. Another fellow came in and took a call on his cell phone, then rushed out after saying, "We'll be ready to launch as soon as they arrive. Oh, we're already late? I'll be right there," before taking off across the runway on his bicycle.

How could I not love this place?

where's our stuff?

Last I heard, the truck was in Tacoma. Should be here soon. The cat is getting mighty pissy about not having her stuff. The dog is just bored.

As for we hobbitts, last night after a brief hunting and gathering mission to Sequim (a lovely drive to a rather uninteresting place, but it does have a Sears, so to speak, as well as a Home Depot), we sat on the camp chairs in front of our fireplace, drinking Blue Heron pale ale (Bridgeport Brewers, Portland, OR) and eating some sort of frozen individual pizza since we have neither plates nor knives nor baking sheets, etc. While we ate, hobbitt read every owners manual we have for every device in the house: gas fireplace, jetted tub, microwave, range, fridge, dishwasher. Why? Because that's the kind of guy he is. It was a raucous night. Not.

Just got a call from the movers, who went too far and are entering Pete Townsend proper. They should be here in a half-hour or so. Time to round up the pests and confine them to their jail for one last day. Poor kids.

swimmingly

All is going well with the contract on the sale of our home in NJ. The buyers plan to remove the in-ground oil tank after they purchase the house. If the inspection discovers any leaks, that's our worry, of course. So far, so good. Keep the good vibes coming, because we're quickly running out of mad money. As well as sane money.

the hobbitts go out on the town

Right now (Wednesday night) hobbitt and I are sitting in camp chairs in our dining room. If anyone is walking by on the main drag, they are seeing us bright and clear in an otherwise empty room. We have just returned from seeing a movie. In a movie theatre. There are readers out there who will be shocked, shocked at this information. I'm not sure what year we last went to the movies. Certainly not since moving back to NJ, and yet here we are, our second night in Port Townsend, and we went to see a movie. And we saw Sahara, in the uptown neighborhood, in a musty old theatre called, go figure, The Uptown Theatre. There were perhaps seven other people along with us.

Well. Sahara. It stars, of course, Matthew McConau-hubba-hubba. Steve Zahn is another of our favorite actors, having endeared himself to us in That Thing You Do. This movie is the Indiana Jones of the new millennium. I only had to close my eyes at one violent scene, and otherwise was able to control myself with a steady mantra of "It's just a movie. It's just a movie." All in all, quite a bit of fun, with appealing, if broadly drawn, main characters.

But enough about our first date in Washington. Back in Illinois, we'd often have two and even sometimes three performances on a single weekend, all at the good old MacAninch at COD. Still, a movie was pretty rare, but go figure, with all that dance, and theatre, and concerts, and comedy.

But that all ended three years ago. This morning, on the phone with my sister, I mentioned we'd attended a movie. There was silence at the other end of the line. Finally, she gasped, "Get out of town. You two went OUT?!?!?"

I guess we're back in the saddle.

where our heroes arrive in pete townsend

We arrived here yesterday afternoon, having enjoyed virtually uninterrupted sunshine from Spokane, where we'd spent the night. Eastern Washington is a thing of profound beauty. We had an easy day of driving, mostly because we'd pushed ourselves to the brink on the three previous days. I want to say it was a real treat arriving here, but we were too tired and cranky to realize that.

The yard was waist-deep in weeds, which is to say that the landscaper I paid good money to had done his job poorly, if at all. After that, the first thing we noticed was that the fridge, which was "installed" and running since late March, is not a tight fit as my sister, who supervised the installation, had said. It was a no fit. The cabinets, and more specifically, the granite counter tops, were not made according to the original specs, or so we were told. The edges, where the fridge opening was to be, overhung the cabinetry and were bull-nosed. The builder had the counters ground down flush, except that they are only flush to the cabinets in the front. In the back, near the wall, there's still another quarter inch that needs to be ground, and so our beautiful nifty new refrigerator can only be pushed back about 2/3 of the way to the wall. It was not a sight we wanted to see when we got here. It's a little too late to return the fridge, and we'd hate to eat the cost of it. We also noticed that several window screens were damaged. This is not the end of the world but not exactly what we were expecting in our brandy-new home.

I had a bit of a meltdown over that. A hissy fit, though I didn't say a word and I didn't cry. It was something like PMS, though it's been years since I could use that excuse. hobbitt was a little upset too, though I learned later his upset was mostly because he felt that he’d "let me down" with picking this house. Nothing could be further from the truth – though at the time yesterday I'm not entirely sure how I felt in that regard. This is such a big change for us that it is difficult to gauge which triggers are from fatigue, which are from disappointment, which are from frustration, etc. In any case, I realized it was in our best interests that I take the dog for a walk. Heaven knows she needed it, since she'd been cooped up in the car for four-and-a-half days. Oh yeah, that goes for me, too. We took off down the hill for the beach. With every step, with each curve in the steeply sloped road, I could see more and more of Port Townsend Bay, and in the stunning sunlight, the water shone and sparkled in a way normally seen only in vacation brochure photos. This was home!

Inti ran along the waterfront with abandon. I noticed the rocky beach front that will add to my poor posture as I rock hunt at low tide. In the distance, to the northeast, I looked for Mount Baker. When my sister was here, she took a photo from this very beach, and the mountain loomed in the distance. No such luck that afternoon. Still, in spite of my vague disappointment, I knew that Mount Baker was there, and someday I'd be able to see it during my walk. We left the beach and walked back up the hill to home. I'm proud to say I made it. It's steep. It's not all that long a walk, but it's all uphill. I didn't need to call hobbitt for the emergency pick-up. My legs felt good, my lungs felt good (though I did curse myself once or twice for not having quit smoking sooner than 1990), and I knew that sooner rather than later, we will both leave our unfit selves behind, if for no other reason than the walk back from the beach.

The walk did me good. It eased my tension, worked out some stress. When I returned, hobbitt confessed his fear of having let me down, and I put on the happy face that we both needed. It was an act, for sure, but nobody said this was going to be easy. We've found our way back to balance under much worse circumstances, and when the stakes were a lot higher, too.

We took ourselves out to Sirens and had a couple three drinks, relaxed, laughed, and limped home to sleep on a tiny air mattress in a room with no curtains under a thin blanket on camp pillows. It sucked big time but eventually sleep prevailed.

This morning the builder called to assure us the cabinet problem would be fixed. The mover called to assure us our belongings would be delivered on Friday morning. The phone company helped me figure out that the reason I couldn't call Ferrell Gas in Sequim was not because our phone service was screwed up, but because I hadn't ordered intra-state long distance. (D'oh!) Brinn, a lovely young woman hired by our realtor to weed our front lawn, was busy doing just that, and a fine job, too. Linda had paid for 5 hours, and that hardly made a dent in the overall picture, but we reached an agreement with Brinn's employer to contract directly with her, at a reduced rate, to have her finish the job. We spent a few hours at the Cyber Bean Cafe, so I could catch up on my banking and bills, and I wrote a blog entry that vanished when I went to post it. Tammy at the community's office helped us with some business and even recommended a good Mexican restaurant where we enjoyed a little lunch. All things are relative, and no place will ever feel like our beloved Las Palmas in Westmont, Illinois. And then, the movie. With popcorn, to boot!

Moving is hard, even when the company pays for packers (which isn't the case with us). Everything is dicey – we're still negotiating the contract for the sale of druid labs east, and with the time change and mail forwarding, that's going slowly. Living here with nothing is at best boring. There's no point in getting groceries since we'll have to keep the fridge as empty as possible until the counter gets fixed. The pests are anxious about being here, particularly when they’ve been left alone in this empty house. The current sleeping arrangements are brutal, though we at least have temporary paper shades on the windows now. (The clerk at the decorating store in town at first said they didn't carry such things, and then went and found some for us. I told her I loved her, then had to ask her name, since such intimacies shouldn't be shared with total strangers. For the record, it's Claudia.)

So even in the rain today, even in the clouds of yesterday, deep down I know everything will eventually be all right. Mount Baker is out there even though I cannot see it. Everything will someday and somehow be all right again. Right?

plains

Who knew? Iowa is one lovely landscape. It undulates. Beautiful!

I didn't think Nebraska was ever going to end. Flatter than Iowa. Lots of horizon. Eh.

Wyoming: Oh. My. God. I have never seen such a vast, desolate, unforgiving sight. The sheer scope of it is unfathomable. It is both achingly beautiful and heartlessly stark.

We're leaving the flatlands tomorrow. I will be having my doggie downers, for sure.

More news when I can get an internet connection.

on the road: casper, wy

So we had acepromazine for the cat and the dog. 10 mg. tablet for the cat, and we're supposed to start with 1/4 tab. 25 mg. for the dog, start with a half. Okay. So far, so good.

We didn't bother to dose either one of them on Friday night. Inti panted in extreme excitement for 5 hours, and the cat mewed a little then spent the rest of the time in her litter box. Turns out she'd puked in her fluffy bed. Okay. I cleaned that up on Friday night.

Saturday, I dosed the dog. She panted so much the night before she was quite dehydrated. She was much calmer with half a tab of doggie downers. Not out of it, but more relaxed. We didn't dose the cat and she puked in her newly-cleaned bed and spent the remained of the day in her litter box, which we hadn't scooped the night before. Which is to say, she was lying in her own crap, though it was just a tiny turd.

Today we dosed them both. Mollie didn't puke in her bed. In fact, she stayed in her bed most of the day, and spent only a few hours lying in the (cleaned) litter box. Inti did equally well, though the meds wore off long before we finished our 13-hour driving day.

Everybody is sleeping now but me. hobbitt and Mollie are sharing the bed by the window. Inti is sacked out on the floor. I'm not sure whether I'll be slipping in the bed with hobbitt or taking the other one. This is the nicest room so far, by far. I can recommend with no reservations the Quality Inn in Casper, Wyoming. They have free internet access. Silly me. I only powered up the laptop to check our itinerary with Rand McNally TripMaker. Now I'm geeking like it's a regular night at home.

moving day, 4/29

Okay, I got over the part where I dropped off my mother's custom made sofa and chair at the Habitat Re-store (that was worth about a half hour of desolate weeping, thinking about how precious it was to her). I got over the part where my brother spent 2.5 hours detailing my car (what can I say? It's the only way we can bond). The movers were pretty nice people, a husband-and-wife team and two helpers. The actual loading went very smoothly. Then, by 2:30 in the afternoon, my home was empty. Of everything.

To say I wept is an understatement. I wailed. I keened. I couldn't even begin to take in the breadth of what I was leaving: among the last places for memories of Mom, and the last family gatherings; innumerable happy times with new and old friends; floating in the pool by day, and in the hot tub under the stars at night; houseguests, houseguests, houseguests; hummingbirds, Cooper's hawks, white-tail deer, bats, redtails; trumpet vines, tupelo, sweet gum, azaleas. I felt as though I was ripping off a beloved skin, because that is precisely what I was doing. I truly didn't want to leave. Ever.

Of course, this is forgetting the cost of living there, the increasing use of the trails out back by ATV's and dirt bikes, the idiot neighbor who likes to drive his earth mover around all days of the week, and the inescapable fact of it being New Jersey, so full of angry, irritated and aggressive people.

I didn't feel good again until the next day, after we'd awakened in Somerset, PA, but even more so when we began the new portion of our trip. That is to say, until we were on new roads. The trip between NJ and Chicago is as familiar to me as my own face, and I'm pretty tired of both.

Of course it's not all about the house, though a whole lot of it is. Neither of us ever thought we'd be lucky enough to call such a place home. We felt like royalty there. It was the most glorious place we could ever imagine sharing with our friends and family. It was like one enormous heart.

But this grief is also about me and my relationship to my family of origin. I've never marched to the beat of their drum. Moving to Illinois wasn't much of a choice, since that's where work was for us. Moving back wasn't either, since there was work that needed to be done and I was going to do it. Being in close proximity to my family was tough a lot of the time, but it was also safe: these are people who no matter how much we might fight and irritate one another will still love me. Regardless. Staying there was a good way to not make choices, to not be my bold self and to not take hold of the adventure of my life.

This move is scary. Listen, we picked this town on the advice of someone we've never even met. We're moving just about as far away from family as is possible and still be in the lower 48. We're leaving over 3 acres of total naked privacy for a property ten times smaller where we'll definitely need window treatments. Hey, I'm not going to start wearing jammies any time soon, okay?

Wow. I'm living my life, we're living our life together, with consideration for no one else's expectations. Terrifying. Now what?