I have the feet of a Welsh fishwife*

See how purty my feet used to be?

What does that mean really? I don't know, but it was what came to mind when I was looking at my feet yesterday. They look all sausage-y and bloated. Ten little piggy sausages sticking out of two great big sausages. Not the slender appendages I am used to!

In fact, I even - briefly - considered wearing sneakers to work.

However, the sausages still fit into my boots so, even though I feel like a contortionist every time I do it, I put my boots on and went to work this morning. Putting on boots is easier than putting on stockings. Believe me.

Last Friday was supposed to be my last day at work, but I don't do well sitting at home alone with the big screen TV. Squandering my precious maternity leave on Oprah and re-runs of 'Flip That House' really doesn't sit well with me. I know that I will want the time when my niblets are here! I will want that time for you to visit!

Plus, I am not really capable of doing much except sitting at this point, so I might as well sit at my desk - rather than sitting at home being driven slowly insane by the unfinished state of the nursery and the dustballs that are collecting under the couches. On the weekends I keep thinking that I can do stuff, only to find myself completely unwound by the effort later.

And taking the subway is quite an experience when you are measuring 50 weeks pregnant.

So I am taking things on a day by day basis and hoping to at least finish out the week.

We had an OB appointment tonight and the babies' constant movement over the last few days has not changed their positions. Baby A (good baby!) is still head down and Baby B (loveable troublemaker!) is breach. Tomorrow morning we find out how big they are now, and I get to spend a half an hour laying about listening to their heartbeats.

They've been moving like crazy but I am sure that when the monitors are hooked up tomorrow and the Doctors want them to move, they will decide it is a GREAT time for a NAP!

Any hoo, I am doing well - aside from the sausage feet. I got out and about a bit this weekend, though I primarily inhabited the couch. I've lost half a pound since last week. Woohoo - keeping the weight gain right under 5o pounds! As if.

Bring on the ice cream!

Cervix is tight as a drum and we are hoping the babies won't make an appearance until after my OB is back from vacation next Monday...

* No offense to the Welsh, of course. Welsh fishwife just has such an evocative ring to it, doesn't it?

Home

This is how you know, right? Oh good lattes, how I missed you. I did manage to make a few good cups of coffee on the stovetop espresso maker, but it's really not the same.

Writing week in Zion was great. I'm not up for that post right now, but it really was great. At the end of it, I felt like I had been away for a long time, and there was a tinge of that "Does it matter if I ever go back?" feeling.


And that made the actual coming home really lovely, quite unexpectedly so. It's been sunny and gorgeous since Saturday, the kind of sunny that makes you believe it's going to be summer again some day. Saturday was my first weekend day in Seattle in ages, and I woke in the morning feeling like I had all the time in the world.

I took advantage of it by going to Ballard Fiore, since it had been months since I was there. Josie was working, and not fifteen minutes after I arrived, Jason and Kate arrived, much to my delight, and then Kevin too. One of the best things about living in the same city for ages is that it's not at all difficult to run into people you know and love, people who make the world seem hospitable and full of fun. That was Saturday morning.

The afternoon was spent on a long walk with Bobby and his aunt's dog Sasha, in the sunshine at Lincoln Park. Later we got soft serve ice cream and sat in the car at Golden Gardens, hiding from the cold wind that had come up, watching people with their dogs.

Saturday night was Maldives at the Tractor with Kate. Have you checked them out yet? It's time you did. Their CD is worth having, but of course live is best.

Today was similar. Coffee with Susan at Queen Anne Fiore, a ritual I have missed, and then errands in the sun. Later I rescued Kate from her computer and was rewarding by having her read me poems and indulge me in girl talk. It was a nice end to the weekend, a little reminder that the life of the mind is alive and well not only with my writing group, but here in my Seattle life too.

Hope your weekend was just as good!

Still Here

... at writing group week in Zion. Since Bucky wasn't here to entertain us, last night we popped The Last Waltz into the DVD player and turned it up loud on the big screen. It was amazing, of course, and made that much better by the fact that we had two rows of big cushy seats in our little theater, all filled with the kind of women who make you feel like you might be living the writing workshop equivalent of having Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Rick Danko and Bob Dylan all up on stage with you.

Robbie or Rick? Please. Rick. Of course.

An Update

Mmmm... babies like cupcakes!

Well, the twins are staying put in mah belly (Austin Powers, anyone?) for at least a bit longer.

Baby A is head down and moving like mad, but Baby B has taken it upon itself to turn all around and be sideways. After months of both babies being head down and in proper delivery position this is... ummm.. a bit annoying.

I really can't figure out how it is that Baby B has so much space to maneuver! I mean, I'm big but theoretically there are two 5+ pound babies in there!

Any hoo, our OB is on vacation until the 25th and, since she's the only Doctor in the practice who could deliver them from this position without a c-section, I REALLY want her to be there.

(You will note that I tried to avoid the v-word there, to avoid us popping up in any unfortunate Google searches.)

So, in order to hold out until the 25th I am trying numerous things. I am not above spending loads of time on the couch, with my feet up, watching bad television. I am also willing to consider a reward system, whereby the twins receive cupcakes and ice cream for staying put.

I am willing to put up with the stretch marks that have recently made an appearance and I will stay home from work on Wednesdays, go to the 5 doctors appointments I have between now and then AND order in every single meal if that will keep them in place for another 12 days.

I totally realize that I am on their schedule and that they will pretty much come whenever they want... but if anyone has any suggestions as to what might make them decide to bake a bit longer, I am totally willing to take it under advisement.

I should also mention that there is quite a healthy betting pool going at my office. Whoever gets the date/sex and birth weight closest wins $200!

We'll be 36 weeks tomorrow! Yay for Valentines Day!

Just Hey.

Every time the phone rings here, I wonder if it's babies... My stomach flops right over.

More photos on Flickr. It's good here.

Temporary Blogging Blackout!

Missing! But not in rehab. Just missed. As are Kae, Barb and Susan.

Ha, not really. But I have disappeared. Or at least this is how it feels out here, near the east gate of Zion National Park, where there is no cell service, and where the big house we have taken over for the week is neatly packed away in drifts of untouched snow. There is internet, as you can see, but otherwise, I feel quite hibernatious, all tucked away in my pajamas and green striped socks with endless mugs of tea.

So much better than Cirque. It's not parents who are the anti-drug, it's girlfriends.

Mija! You Be the Judge!

Jenny from the block at Marchesa... satin is not your friend at this point, my sistah!

So, apparently La Lopez is ALSO expecting twins... right around the same time as I am! Totally biting my style, but whatever...

Anyhoo, I saw this picture of her and could not help but think that perhaps I am outgrowing La Lopez in the belly department, but at least I dress it up better, no?

Big, yes - undeniably so. But wrinkly and baggy? Umm, I think not!

I would also like to mention that she is not doing anybody any favors by wearing those stilettos. I am not admiring the inner personal strength that allows her to stand and smile on the outside whilst collapsing and whimpering on the inside...

I am thinking 'why must you set this horrible Christina Aguilera-esque example for poor pregnant women everywhere? I thought you were more mature than that nonsense!

Plus, if you MUST wear heels - don't make them the kind that cut you off at the ankles... they make your knees look fat. And at this point, the knees are all we've got left.'

Yup, that's what I'm thinking.

Just Two Things I Like A Lot

Tom's big breakfast at Lola -octopus!

Getting ready to go to Zion National Park for the next writing week, so just a couple photos today.

So pretty I sometimes call him Beyonce.

So Super

I love this photo of Pam. From the hot springs, of course. There's something about those photos that I love and keep coming back to. The way they aren't quite right, but in a way that makes me want to look at them more. That's the kind of writing I want to do. Not there yet.

I was in Denver this weekend, in case you were wondering what all that airplane stuff was about. All that flying during my year off left me with a few frequent flyer miles, which really should only be used, in my opinion, for completely frivolous things like flying to CO to watch the Big Game. Even though the big game was in AZ. Whatever. Pam was in Denver, and so was new style sushi and a great movie theater with a bar in the lobby, and Pam's ridiculously pretty and smart god-daughter and my sunglasses. My sunglasses will be in Denver forever because at breakfast they were flushed down the toilet. Yeah, zip! Just gone down the pipe.

Sometimes that's just the way it goes.

The End of an Era

That's a 15-year-old sticker y'all. Mom put it on the door.

Well, I would write about the shower.... but I really need someone to send me some pictures so that I can! An un-illustrated account of the shower could not possibly do justice to the madness, the mayhem, the avalanche of adorable baby nonsense that has now taken over our home...

But as soon as I get some pictures, I will type something right up!

In the meantime, I wanted to take a moment to memorialize the apartment that is no more.

4c gave and gave and gave. It was not unlike the giving tree - right up until the very last moment when it gave me a five-figure buyout from the landlords (naturally the funds are going directly to the twins college fund...).

It gave me years (15!) of below-market rents.

It gave me the experience of suing my landlords - which did a lot for my backbone.

It gave me multiple roommates... of which you, dear sister, are the only one with whom I am still in touch. Karen? Rebecca? Shenan? Gone with the wind.

It gave me freedom to travel. That below market rent thing.

It gave me Eugene - I am convinced to this day that he was with me for the cheap rent.

It gave me stability - which in New York is saying something!

It gave me the house in Vermont (see below market rent thing again).

It gave me the down payment for our new apartment (ditto).

And it gave me many many fine memories of many many fun cocktail parties.

It gave me a home.

It was a shoebox (in shape, if not actual size) and it had only two windows, but when I left it last thursday - for the very last time - I had a real moment of sadness to be closing that chapter of my life. I would have taken pictures but, with everything out of it, it looked barren and sad and kind of stubbly. It wasn't really my place any more.

I love the new apartment and I love that the babies are soon to arrive, and I know that I am not missing the four flights of stairs. But there will always be a part of me (perhaps hanging out with the mythical ghost of John Belushi?) that lives there.

That lived there.

A last walk out the door.

Home Safe

A Few Agenda Items for the Year of Bravery

Me as a lobster

My friend Kae has a tradition she takes part in with some old friends of hers, where every year they choose a word, one word, to describe the past year and one word to describe the new year. Being the word lover and New Year lover that I am, I love the idea of this tradition.

I've been thinking about it ever since she mentioned it before our trip to the hot springs. I still don't know what the word was for last year - The Year of Leaving, maybe? Let me know if you think of it for me. I did choose a word for 2008, though. Not too surprising that I went right for the future word, is it? I just can't get that future stuff out of my head. Anyway, it came to me right around the time I realized that if I wanted to actually get a chance to chat with Pam while we were hanging out at the hot springs, I was going to have to get into the pool they called the Lobster Pot. 110 degrees. The word I needed at that moment was Bravery. At the end of the year we can decide how well I did with this, but I'm liking it so far. I think the future word will work best if it's a word that will help me when I feel like I'm at a crossroads, sort-of a question I can ask myself.

In other future news, I've finally put together my list of 36 things to do before I turn 37. Last year, I fell in love with Andrea's list, and since she wrote a new one for her most recent birthday, I decided I needed to catch up.

It was interesting writing this - really hard to come up with that many. Is it cheating to have all that sock knitting on there? I don't care, I really do want to knit all those things and a lot more this year. I like knitting as a measure of time. The interesting thing about making the list this time was noticing that it made me feel like I'm already pretty content I with my life. I didn't feel like there were many things that I don't already do, nor did I feel like I needed a list to get myself to do things. Though there are some dreaded tasks on there, like teeth cleaning. Okay, it was also interesting to think about what I didn't want to put on the list, like the trips I want to take to Bora Bora and Iceland one day, or anything about, um, not being single for the rest of my life. Nope, those things just don't belong there right now. We're doing other things in 2008.

Anyway, here it is in all its glory. I do like having it, but more than that, I know that at the end of the year, I will like having it to look back on. I read a great interview the other day with Julie Christie, who I think I might want to be, and she quoted Sarah Polley saying "Memory is the way you make sense of love." I think memory is the way I make sense of everything. That's a big sentence, lots to think about there, but we'll leave that for the future.

1. Hold the twins
2. Stay at Ace Portland again
3. Make myself some more nice mittens for the work walk
4. Ride the Orbiter one more time before they close it down
5. Read the new translation of War & Peace
6. Read all of J.D. Salinger again
7. Walk 1,000 miles
8. Go back to buying a book of poetry a week
9. Blog a little about aforementioned poetry books
10. Get rid of unwanted books
11. Do something about the closets
12. Go to Tomales again
13. Learn how to use that feature on my camera associated with the little tulip icon
14. Make some financial goals
15. Eat at Nishino
16. Finish socks for Dad
17. Finish socks for Kirsten
18. Knit socks or Kristin (who also needs to be the target of a blog post this year, for sure!)
19. Knit socks for Regan (ditto the paranthetical item above)
20. Knit socks for the latest additions to our writing group
21. Knit shawl for Kate
22. Knit something special for Algene
23. Knit something special for Eugison
24. Take another ferry trip to Bainbridge
25. Get my teeth cleaned
26. Set up my writing stuff at home
27. Buy another piece of art
28. Frame another existing piece or two
29. Get back to the ranch for a picture with grown-up Liam
30. Get to Macleod Residence (or breakfast, or the yarn store) with HxB
31. Get Pam to Seattle, preferably for something completely frivolous
32. Take a secret trip that I can’t talk about here yet
33. Pick up the novel again. Just pick it up.
34. Take more writing risks
35. Take even more writing risks than that
36. Be brave

And that's gonna have to keep you kids busy for the weekend, cause guess what? I'm getting on a plane again tomorrow AM. It's a good thing they put out the New Yorker weekly.

XOXO
H

What Happened After The Shower (or... this may or may not have involved hysterical laughter and comments such as "who peeled that one off the pole?"

Allison's new apartment is lovely. In just the ways you would expect from her, if you've known her a while. High ceilings, pre-war, big windows and wood floors. When I got there last weekend, they had been there about a week, but all the furniture and books and things looked like they belonged. It seems like the place she's meant to be.

I'm having a little trouble keeping up on where I'm meant to be. I only bought my tickets to the next writing group week today, and we leave a week from Saturday. I'm about a dozen blog posts behind - I can hear them whizzing by my head every night as I get in bed too late and too behind on other things to be able to justify taking the time to capture them, and when I did finally write this one I actually posted it to the wrong blog the first time. Yeah, there is a wrong blog. How's that for not knowing where you're meant to be?

Of course, those things are just a sliver of the reason why my favorite part of my surprise appearance at Allison's baby shower in New York last weekend was the catching up part. It wasn't so much catching up on news, though we did a little of that. It was mostly just sitting on the couch at the end of the night, and the catching up was the kind of catching up you do just by being with people you love, in the same room, breathing the same air. My mom, Allison, Dakota and I don't get to do that as much as I'd like, but it's certainly often enough to remind me how very much I love all three of them. To say nothing of Baby Scrumptious and the twins, Algene and Eugeson.

I miss you already.

XOXO

H

In Case You Don't Already Know What We Did This Weekend

Surprise! Back to NYC for a special event.
More soon.

What we've been up to

Eugene and his educational tools. Do you think the teacher looks concerned?

Well, I'm afraid that I am not yet touching upon this weekend, which has been epic to say the least, but I did want to provide my excuses for the last couple of weeks of absentee-ism on my part.

We have been in the throws of total chaos.

People always say how having babies, moving, and getting fired are the three hardest things that can put your marriage to the test and over the last few months we've been dealing with wo out of the three (though I really think that the having babies part should carry more weight since we're having two at once).

We've had a ton of doctors' appointments (OB once a week and Maternal Fetal ultrasounds bi-weekly) but that is pretty much old hat at this point. We also did the infant CPR and new baby parenting classes - as illustrated above and learned all about breastfeeding, diapering, and bathing our new babies.

We are totally experts now and I know that it will be easy-peasy! Hahahahahahaha...

That's the laughter of madness you hear!

Also, we've had the walk-thru at our new apartment (where we discovered a giant bubble of water in the ceiling paint in the kitchen) the closing (where we discovered that our mortgage was structured differently than we expected), the organizing of having the floors refinished (which was totally worth the headache, but ay-yi-yi, what a pain in the ass!) and the moving (where we discovered that I have just as much crap as I was afraid I did!)

My sweet love, now gone...

I did agree to purge some items. For example - the six-foot tiger that has been lounging in our living room for the last nine years has gone on to a better home... or that cloud in the sky called 'le dump'. I don't know because I had to ask our neighbor Charra to deign to dispose of it for me - and she promised not to tell me where it ended up.

Some things just cut too deep - ya know? Never underestimate a 34-year-old woman's ability to be overly attached to a big stuffy! Even a filthy, dusty deflated tiger!

Packing for the moving was hard. The actual moving was hard. The unpacking has been hard.

And then there was this weekend.

Which was just delightful and wonderful and completely validated that my husband is the sweetest man on earth and knows and loves me. Despite my crazy-making hormones. Despite the move. Despite the impending arrival of two creatures who will, more than likely suck the life out of us - leaving dried up husks behind - and then bolster us back up with adorable smiles and their yummy baby smell.

So it has been a long couple of weeks, leaving little or no time for blogging. Plus I have the firewall at work to contend with - the nerve of blocking me from my own blog!

But I will try to do better, and I will definitely post about this weekend because I know that some of you out there are waiting with baited breath and you rightfully deserve a post, because you were so very generous with us!

For now, I just have to say that the weekend made the last weeks totally worthwhile. And I think that's saying a lot.

Guess Where We're Off to Now?

Me, and my shawl, and my New Yorker?

Last of the Winter White

Bobby sent me this cell phone photo from his morning coffee holiday at Victrola and it seemed like the perfect thing for the last day of Shari's winter white week.

I met Katherine and Peggy for a drink last night at Licorous before we went to Cheap Wine and Poetry. Kate did an amazing job with her poems, but let's save that for another day. Anyway, the three of us were talking about blogs and how they work and how all these people in the blogosphere know each other. I was delighted recently to learn that the latest addition to our writing group was someone who has a blog I've been aware of for a while now, and they thought that was amazing, that I had randomly come across her before.

It's these little things like Winter White Week that do it - Shari is hosting the week on her blog, so her readers come look at winter white photos by clicking on the links she's posted. It's just a little way to explore, to literally see a snapshot of someone else's world. A little peeping without all the nasty paparazzi aspects of it. If only we were all satisfied with getting a glimpse into people's lives in this kind of benign way, instead of having to see exactly what poor Michelle W looks like as she brings Matilda home to NY this week and begins the long slow process that grief demands of us. I realize it's not my life, but that death has made me a little sad all week.

Anyway, I am liking joining in on the photos with some of my favorite bloggers, like Lisa S, Curious Bird, Knitting Iris, and being reminded that there are other, mostly happier, things going on in the world every minute. My other blog inspiration for the day comes from Hula Seventy, who has posted her 37 things to do before I turn 38 list. I think I need to get on it, and come up with my own. You know how I love the future, and lists like this are one of many ways to fling yourself wholeheartedly into it. I love that.

Lesley Wants To Know

Why my shadow looks like a dog. I know. I'm pretty sure I know.

Seattle Peeps!

Cheap Wine and Poetry tonight at Hugo House! And guess who's reading? Lovely Kate! You know I'll be there.

More winter whites

I like this photo, with the big pile of snow on the little birdhouse, all that sky, the visual joke of it... I guess I take a lot of photos like this, where I'm trying to just pick one little thing and isolate it. There's something wrong about them too, a little forced or gimmicky, really. I do like it, I'm just left a little dissatisfied somehow.

I suppose it would help if I really knew how to use my camera. Maybe I could get the little pinecones in crisp detail, with more depth or definition. This is my fantasy, at least. For now, most of the photos I take turn out to be nothing more than souvenirs, when I want them to be more like little stories. I love the photos from yesterday just for their strangeness, while I can't help but feel that these ones today are a little sad, like a group of words that has had a plot forced upon them.

Still, they recall how delighted I was when we woke up in the morning at the Hot Springs and all the steam had frozen into crystals covering each branch of every tree, and everything all moving with glitter in a way that you could never photograph even if you knew your camera better. It was like someone had made Christmas real again.

And of course the ranch was gorgeous and gave me a feeling of contentment and relief. It's so rare for me to not be on my way to somewhere else, but when you are at the ranch, you are always every day just There.

Wherever you go, there you are. I realize that's usually said as a kind of caution, an explanation for why a certain kind of person is never happy, but there's a flip side to it is really lovely if you think about it - I want to be There, wherever I am. I'm not always good at that. But with time, I'll get better. Don't you think?

Dark Whites

Pagosa Hot Springs

What I look like at 9 degrees

Road to sushi

Not quite ready for the Colorado post yet, just a few of the stranger photos for you. More to come - I took 385! Since arriving home from the ranch trip on Sunday night, I've been busy settling back into drunken chicken sandwiches at Baguette Box, steaming Moule Frites at Le Pichet and Red Velvet Cake at the Kingfish Cafe. It's amazing what you can get done in 24 hours when you put your mind to it.

Mission Accomplished

Just Gonna Have To Settle For Bikini and Mittens

Operation Snow Bunny hit a snag this morning. We were all set with our new fantastically hideous boots from a vintage store in Portland, until we realized how damn heavy the things were. Look at them - you can tell they aren't the kind of thing you want to have in your carry-on, can't you? And even more than wanting to look ridiculously silly in the snow, I want to avoid checking luggage. So the boots were sacrificed and I will just have to hope that you will do you your part to appreciate them here. Especially since last night when I considered wearing them to the new vodka bar I like, Bobby said "Mmmm... no." He was right. But I still love them. What, you say "Wear them on the plane?" Ha, right, um, that doesn't work when the only pair they had was a size smaller than you wear, but you bought them anyway. These boots are for a show pony, not a workhorse. At the airport, you gotta be a workhorse.

It's going to be quite on the blog here for a few days. Ali is moving into her new digs, very exciting, but not very blog-conducive, right? And I'm on a plane for ABQ, where Lesley will pick me up and whisk me off to her casita. She promises that there will be lattes before the long drive to Creede the next day, where it is -2 degrees, but the wolfhounds, and the wood stove and the stovetop espresso maker wait. Aren't you glad I'm going to the ranch? If only for one night.

The second day we'll head over Wolf Creek Pass and on to Pagosa Springs, which is how this whole bikini and mitten thing came about.

I think you know, I'll report back. In the mean time, everyone have a good weekend, and I think this post says it. Give it a little thought, will ya? That man was Love.

How To Go Back Home

It's not easy to be a regular at a hotel. I managed it once, back when the company I was working for was bought by a company in the Bay Area. I spent about three nights a week down there for a while, and that was enough to make me a regular at the Claremont. Not that being a regular there made a tremendous difference. The Claremont was reserved, self-contained. She was grand, in a slightly over-the-hill kind of way. She doled out a few familiar nods here, an upgrade there, but the Claremont never did smile when I walked in the door. Maybe she was giving me my space. And that was fine, then. She was pretending that she wasn't past her prime yet, and I was pretending... well, that's another story.

If I was going to be a regular at a hotel now, I would want something different. No pretending, and certainly no stand-offishness, not even the elegant kind. To be a regular now, I would require something a good deal more enthusiastic than the Claremont could offer.

And I think I know just who I'd get that from. Susan was right, at 10PM, I was off to go be myself, in what has become my absolute favorite hotel so far, ever. This hotel is so good, it's one step away from love.

There were symptoms of love that night, that's for sure. There's that feeling you get, like you have discovered a soul such as no other soul you have ever discovered before. This is a soul that has fantastical things, walls full of birds, the photo booth in the lobby, and someone lovely from the front desk who will linger at the bar at the end of the night, drinking old-fashioneds and charming you with talk about the things you love most, books and being young in New York, moving for love, losing love, finding it again. This soul is a building, with big old windows like eyes wide-open and swinging doors like easy smiles. It is welcoming and lively, and the people who work in the kitchen, at the bar, in the coffee shop and at the front desk, are all the kind of people who remind you just why it is you like people in the first place. People who will give you a hug at the end of the night the first time they meet you, who will take your email and maybe write and maybe not.

And either way will be fine, of course, because all of it, the scraps of paper with addresses on them, the photos you took, the book you left behind for the bar back, they were all just the many ways this hotel, just like the good kind of love, was giving you back to yourself, reminding you who you were before, and who you get to be again, now.

In Which Susan Attempts To Help This Blog Live Up To Its Name, And I Let Her, In Spite of My Tremendous Modesty, Because I Love Her

Ode to a trip to Portland

by Guest Blogger Susan*

I am not a writer but Heather is. And an appreciator of people. An amazing person. An amazing friend.

I am not a writer. I'm a nurse with sub par spelling and grammar. A girl who falls asleep at 10:00 with the TV on on a Saturday night. And Heather is my tolerant best friend who covers me with a shawl and tries to turn off the TV despite my protests and slips quietly out the door to go...well... Be Heather.

I am not an artist but Heather is. I get my coffee and smile at the barista, but Heather will notice, appreciate, and document. Turning a simple exchange into something more special, a photo, perhaps a short story later.

I am not an artist, I step over, walk by, and completely miss things that Heather notices and shows to those of us too busy, too preoccupied, or too far inside our own heads to notice.

Heather observes, appreciates, absorbs, then creates. And the world is a better place because of it.

Thanks for a great weekend, girlee!!
~ S


* she really did write this, I swear!

Potential Titles for Upcoming Blog Posts About the PDX

1. Susan and Heather's Most Romantical Weekend Ever
   
2. The Magical, Magical Night I Drank Old Fashioneds and Didn't Get a Headache
   
3. Cruise Ship on Dry Land
   
4. I Am Never Leaving This Block Again Ever
   
5. In Which Portland Raises Everyone's Self Esteem
   
6. I Should Have Done More Tongue Work On Mine
   
7. You Can Drink Your Latte in the Shower Here
8. Heather Learns Her Mac Keyboard Shortcuts From A Guy in the Lobby At 2:45 AM (open apple + shift + r!)
9. Harmonica On a String
10. Was That You Who Called Me At 2:28 AM?
11. How'd I Get That Scrape on My Belly?
12. What's The Name of It? Rite Aid.
13. Which Is Sweeter, Boots or Cupcake?
14. Tea Party in Room 318
15. Dr. Phil? It's Susan.

Poor Hawks.

I'm pretty sure this is directly related to GWB being gifted with LW's jersey. Dammit!! 

Go Hawks!

The Undead Book Club

I've been having a writing crisis lately. Maybe you've heard me say this before. Lots of people have. I think when I say it, people think of something like a literary case of low self-esteem. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I have never suffered from that, but that isn't exactly what's going on right now.

Tami helped me articulate it a little more clearly a few days ago, and then last night Lisa and Kathleen indulged me in further musings on the subject. It's not the words that are the problem, it's not individual sentences. I love those, love tinkering with them and spend many minutes a day on that tinkering. Some things don't get revised much - text messages, emails, certain blog entries. But some things just run through my head like lyrics to a song that I am always changing the tune of. This is one of the reasons I crave the walk to work, why I will freeze my nose and have bad hair every day and wear out a pair of heels in less than a month. I want the sentences, I need them. I would go so far as to say I am as addicted to them than I am to lattes. More addicted to them than I am to cheese.

The problem with the writing is the idea of a story. I am not being modest when I tell you that an understanding for how to make a story eludes me. It's as though I am trying to build a mammal, backbone and all, but know only how to make a candy-coated covering, or a jellyfish.

And of course, part of the problem is clearly a problem of faith. Part of the problem is that writing a story seems to me to be an act like building a mammal, an act for a deity, not a mortal. Who am I to say What Happens? And that's what a story is, right? What Happens?

What happened last night was a little vodka tasting. Just a little. Hints of fig, a soupcon of ginger, a touch f grape. Lisa and Kathleen met me at Venik for what I am now thinking of as the Book Club That Will Not Die. I met Kathleen 8 years ago because Lisa took me to her book club, after I begged. That was a lifetime ago for me, when I was a homeowner, settled, partnered. Those things changed and so did book club, but it keeps coming back, and I love that it is turning out to be an irrepressible force.

Kathleen and Lisa are the reason, as has become evident now that the club has been whittled down to we three. These two are the perfect people to talk books with, to talk about my own writing with, because they are the kind of readers that writers write for. Thoughtful, generous, eclectic in their tastes, willing to take a chance. Kathleen has been in school recently, so not reading as much as she'd like, but the book we read this time, The Raw Shark Texts, lured her back into the world of fiction. When her husband Scott saw her curled up on the couch, racing through the book, he said "Uh oh, It's Back!"

Which is why I am so glad to have the two of them as blog readers, because as I told them last night, at some point, all this work I do with sentences, all the ways I carve and cut and paste and weld things together, it needs to go somewhere. To invite a reader into your writing is a risk that work demands and deserves. Whether you, whether I, ever learn to write a mammal or not. Because candy-coated shells can be good too, and jellyfish are lovely. As long as I can manage to resist the urge to combine the two. Cause nobody really wants a candy-coated jellyfish. Do they?

Still talking, even in the rain