My Morning Walk and Notes on Friendship

Because I am a packrat I didn't just leave this metal loopy thingy on the side of the road after I snapped that pic. I put it in my pocket and took it home. I am sure it will come in handy someday.

Theme song for this walk: the Soundtrack from Once

Once is a movie about finding a friend who is just the right fit - really it's more complicated than that but, boiled down, that is the gist. I am going to ramble on a bit but just sit tight with me here and I will try to wrap it up into some sort of point. I went to see the Sex and the City movie a few months ago. Spare me the rolled eyes. I understand that it is pure fantasy written by men who don't have any grasp on the real lives of women. That said, I left the movie (alone because I have no girlfriends here and Matt and Drew refused) feeling sad that I don't have any lifelong girlfriends who live nearby. A feebly nomadic lifestyle will do that to a person. We have lifelong friends but they are scattered: Marble and James in Utah (well James soon to be in China), Audrey in NYC, Ward in San Fran, Patrick in San Fran, Sean & Xochitl in Los Angeles, Jenny in the OC, Sarah in Memphis, etc.

I watched Once for the first time back in April when Matt was on one of his never ending business trips. Once is a melancholy little film but it hit a sweet spot in my soul. It made me feel sad, lonely and hopeful, threw into relief the difference between alone and lonely. I felt lonely.

Fast forward a month into May. Matt is gone again. This time to Utah. I take to hanging out in the local bar like a teetotaling floozy. I strike up a friendship with the bartender. I am such a cliche'. I have mentioned Drew in previous posts but I think he deserves his own paragraph. We watch American Idol and talk politics and religion. When I say "you know, I think Barack Obama is a secret xxxxxxx" Drew not only gets what I am saying, he finishes the sentence in unison. Matt returned from the Beehive State and now Matt and Drew geek out to their hearts content discussing obscure movies, rare DVD releases and beer. They throw me a bag of candy to keep me from zoning out in boredom. We go to movies together, watch bad TV together, laugh at offensive jokes together, love/hate the weirdness of small town life together and my lonely frown has now turned upside down. One more friend in our collected family - and this one lives nearby.

Now, Drew, no more grousing about Steph getting her pic posted on the blog before you. Here is a pic plus a thousand words, and lovey, mushy words at that.

My Morning Walk

I have posted these birds before but I couldn't resist another picture with the bright blue sky as background.

Theme song for this walk: The entire Mamma Mia! Sountrack. (The movie version, not the Broadway or pure ABBA versions - which I am sure are both fine - just not what I happened to be listening to.) Comment on the movie: It is an embarrassingly goofy exterior surrounding a candy and chocolate covered heart of gold. I unexpectedly enjoyed it.

Alpacas: So Cute They Creep Me Out in the Extreme

I have been wearing Matt down on his resolve not to have a llama someday with my resolve to own a llama someday. I will fess up here. My llama desire stems from my encounters with Precious (who is gone now. I don't know where she went). Matt has suggested we get alpacas instead of llamas since they are smaller and we are, afterall, beginners at the whole farm life thing. A few months ago I had a nightmare about alpacas. They were really out of proportion in my dream and, like the aliens in Galaxy Quest that look like sweet, greenish-blue little children until they reveal grinning mouths of razor sharp teeth and chow down on one of their own, these alpacas were scary in the extreme. Please refer to fig 1 and 2 at the bottom of this post.

I had my first up-close alpaca encounter on Saturday. These ladies were on display by their owners. They are very soft but still uber creepy to me. The fellow explaining all things alpaca to us showed me the light colored alpaca's teeth. They are just like llamas - gums on top and dull teeth on the bottom. But that was just one alpaca. I am not convinced that the rest of them won't shred me alive whilst spitting on me to tender me up.

Alpaca breeder, Matt, strange lady, strange girl, Drew.

Show me your teeth. I don't trust your big soft eyes.

fig 1

fig 2

The Oscars

I watched the Oscars on Sunday as I do every year. I only had one horse in the race so to speak. The only nomination I felt strongly about was Best Actor Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises. He didn't stand a chance of winning (and he didn't win) so the excitement level was low for me. I was completely underwhelmed by No Country for Old Men and was disappointed that it got the top honors. Also, Into the Wild was robbed. Not a single nod. Not for Emile Hirsh who was in nearly every scene, not for cinematography, not for Michael Brook's soundtrack. Not for best song. How is it that Enchanted got 3 best song nominations but there wasn't enough love for Eddie Vedder's original work on Into the Wild? Understand that I have never had any love for Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam but he really brought something special to the movie and deserved a nod. Seriously? 3 noms for Enchanted and not a single nom for Into the Wild? Please. The only song that deserved a nom for Enchanted is Happy Working Song and only because Giselle is dancing and singing with rats, cockroaches and pigeons. That scene was almost worth the cost of admission and my 90 minutes.

Bellingham

Here are some shots from our trip to Bellingham. The central part of the trip was going to see the band that did all the music for Andy's movie. I didn't take my camera to the show because when they played the night before the drummer's wife's wallet was stolen. Big bummer because Andy danced and I have no photographic evidence! A little background - Andy was a film major at Western Washington University. He filmed a movie there called The Dream Garden. He is still editing the movie so none of us have seen it yet.

Matt, Maggie Anderson (the drummer's daughter), Andy & Bailee

Lisa, Jolaina (the star of The Dream Garden), & Bailee. They all live in Toledo so we get to see them often.

Colin & his daughter Keira. Colin and Andy are partners in film. They make their movies together. As Andy was making The Dream Garden, Colin was filming Room 113.

This is Bailee, Jolaina's sister. She is a delight! Matt and I are sooo going to adopt her. Here she is seen standing on a bridge overlooking a waterfall that she fell into once upon a time. I wouldn't say she is accident prone but I would say she is very adventurous and so her potential for disaster is higher than normal. Love ya Bailee!

To Clarify

Sarah was asking where we are living now - in the Sister House or in the shed. We are in the Shed. The Sister House is still full of bugs, bees and all manner of icks. Plus, it is still sitting in the front yard of the Frye family. Speaking of the Sister House, Matt and Tom will be continuing the demo this week. The plan is to get the back lean-to completely removed and begin work on the chimney demo. Once that is done and the loan docs go through we will be ready to move it to our property. We will be living in the shed for quite some time yet. It will be our base while we do all the renovations to the house.
Here are some before and after pics.

The living space before we moved in (the sellers cleaned out the furniture but left the lab rat white walls and softly buzzing flourescent lights.

A bit messy but here is the living space "after" photo. Matt literally rolls out of bed and lands in his work space. We painted the walls but have yet to make any changes to those damnable flourescent lights. We don't have them on much. We use lamps.

Here is the bay full of our stuff just as the movers left it.

Here is the bay with a little living space carved out. I am happy to report that the TV made the trip OK. That was the big worry. We are not hooked up to any sort of cable/dish service. We just have our DVD player hooked up. The one and only movie we have had time to watch so far was Ravenous! Great first movie to watch living off the beaten path in the country.

We made it!

Got to Winlock yesterday evening around 6:30pm. Our shed on the property was waiting for us. Kathy had a table of fruit, snacks and water set up to welcome us home. Let me backtrack a bit though and start the story from Los Angeles

We spent 14 hours packing up on Wednesday. We thought we were in good shape going into our last day of packing, having already pulled out and packed everything from every closet and cupboard and boxed up the kitchen. We were wrong. Stuff just kept multiplying. We took a break at 8pm and went to Sean, Xochitl & Finn's house for dinner and one last visit. It was a great way to spend one of our last evenings in Los Angeles. After dinner we came back home and put in another 2 hours of work.

The movers were scheduled to arrive Thursday morning between 8 and 9. They showed up at 7:20 and caught us completely unprepared. We were scrambling to get the last of our belongings in boxes. It took 5 guys 3 1/2 hours to load everything from the apartment to the truck. With every load that went down the stairs I thought to myself "this is the best money I ever spent!" Once they were gone and we were left with an empty apartment I went to work scrubbing the carpets trying to rid them of all the cat puke - sorry if I offended anyone's delicate sensibilities. Once I finished spot cleaning, Matt went back over everything with a steamer. Looked pretty good if I do say so myself.

Thursday evening Andy and his friend Rick came over and we all went to see the new Harry Potter at Mann's Chinese. It was a good way to let our brains take a vacation from all the move worries. After Andy left and we went back into our empty apartment I had a sobbing spell. I will miss Los Angeles terribly. And I will miss living so near Andy. It was great to have the chance to get to know him while we lived in the same city. We spent Thursday night sleeping on yoga mats on the wood floor in the living room - not the best way to rest up for a 2 day road trip.

Friday we woke up early and packed the cars. Matt's car, Friq, was filled to the brim with our computers and my car, Fraq, was filled with cats. Una, Lily, Russell and Quinten were completely freaked out at this point. I hired a maid service to come to the final clean and they were still at it, under the watchful eye of our manager, Judy, when we pulled out of town at around 10:30am.

We had a pretty uneventful drive (the cats will tell you differently) up to Red Bluff, CA where we spent the night. As soon as we opened the cat carriers Russell and Quinten ran under the bed. Una and Lily took things much more in stride. In case you ever find yourself in Red Bluff and consider staying at the Cinderella Riverview Motel you should know the following - Negatives: the bathroom is the sort of dirty that never comes clean, the towels will take off at least one layer of skin, there are cigarette burns on the mattress. Positives: they allow pets (this may be a negative for you), there is a view of the Sacramento River, there is a tasty Mexican restaurant nearby but I don't know the name.

Saturday we slept in a little and got back on the road at 10:30 again. The cats were less willing to get in the carriers and were much more vocal on the road. They would tire themselves out with all the howling, fall asleep, wake up only to realize they were still in cages and still in the car and start crying all over again. A little more than halfway through Oregon the scenery began to change and I started to get really excited about our new life. Our new place is only an hour north of Portland so that town was a major milestone. The miles flew by once we made it over the border into Washington and before we knew it we were pulling into our driveway.

The cats were unloaded and once again, the boys ran for cover while the girls explored every nook and cranny. There were deer having dinner in the yard when we arrived!!! After unpacking we drove into Winlock for dinner. Not too many vegetarian options on the menu at the place we ate so we ended up with grilled cheese (velveeta sp?) and tater tots!! ha ha ha! I took pictures of the Winlock egg and one of the chicken statues in town and will post them when I get my own computer set up. I am now using Tom and Kathy's computer.

Got back to our shed and set up the air mattress. I tried to stay awake for Kathy & Sharon's visit but I was pretty drowsy by the time they came by to welcome us. Went to sleep to the sound of trains in the distance, birds and horses. Woke up in the middle of the night freezing on a semi-deflated mattress. Stupid air molecules shrinking in the cold! Sometime during the night the cats discovered that there is an upstairs and we could hear them wandering around up there. Lily has staked her claim on the upstairs. Whether it is because she really likes being out of the way or is too chicken to climb down the rickety stairs remains to be seen. Una came to snuggle in the bed. Russell eventually came and burrowed his way under the covers. When we left this morning to come over to Tom and Kathy's, Quinten was still in hiding under the shower that is under construction.

I feel good about everything. No more tears. Ask me in 2 months if I still feel that way. Love to you all.