Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 51

Van Damme State Park

At Van Damme State Park in California, $45/night gets you a sloped campsite with no electric or water hookup, plus access to a shower that costs $1 for five minutes of water. I suppose I sort of get the shower thing as a method of water conservation — limiting the amount of water campers use is probably good for the environment. I still resented it, though. Seriously, $45 should get you a free shower.

That said, you do get the sound of the ocean. Admittedly, I kept waking up and being grumpy about being so close to a highway, and then having to remind myself that it was the ocean I was listening to, not the highway, but it was the ocean. And it smelled like ocean and pine trees and campfire smoke, which is a decidedly different and nicer fire scent than the wildfire scent that’s been so oppressive throughout my west coast travels.

Plus I got to meet @theroadtoadventure, aka Kate, who is on a quest to see all the national parks and monuments (443 of them), taking beautiful pictures along the way. Her van is extremely cool inside — she turned one bed into a desk space, and put a real mattress on the other — so we talked mods and campgrounds and places I should see.

And yesterday morning, I got to take the dogs to one last beach before I turned my back on the Pacific Ocean and headed inland. It was a rather seaweed-y, rocky beach, but we did enjoy it. Not as much as the beaches in Arcata, though.

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B, wondering why we’re at the sandy place again. He’s not as much a fan of the beaches as Z is.

I’m pretty sure that some of my (I’m sure detectable) grumpiness is just reluctance to move on. It was probably a good thing that there was a nest of yellow jackets (hive?) right in the corner of the house by the side door of the van or S might have had an electric cord dangling out her kitchen window all winter long. I really liked Arcata.

Some of that, of course, was the company I was with. But we also had a really good time mixing tourism with domesticity. The grand plans we concocted when I arrived — of kayaking, cruises around the bay, maybe camping — did not all come to fruition. But we went to the beach a bunch of times; wandered around Eureka and ate oysters; visited the Trees of Mystery and admired the objects in the Native American museum there; saw Serenity in a movie theater; visited a friend’s photography exhibit; went to the farmer’s market… a good and busy set of tourist-type activities.

And we also cleaned out and organized her storage shed; cleaned out and organized her refrigerator and freezer; cleaned out and organized the wall of bookshelves in her living room. A few more days and I would have been painting her kitchen. And we cooked some delicious meals: pot roast, sautéed shrimp in summer rolls, sous vide steak. Plus shopped and did laundry and went to the thrift store… it felt very homey. I guess I understand why six weeks of feeling very at-home in other people’s homes has left me feeling a little homesick.

Or maybe worrying about R has just made me miss him. The good news is that he made it through Irma without excitement, although he did decide to evacuate Friday night. Is this ironic? He evacuated to Jacksonville, where the flooding was apparently much worse than it was in Sarasota. Oops. But it was still an enormous relief to me as the storm made its way up Florida to know that R was inland, not on the coast.

In other news… oh, so many things I want to remember, and of course none of them are coming back to me now that I’m sitting in front of my computer. I’m not a cat person, largely because I’m very, very allergic, but S has one that I developed a serious infatuation with. They call him Tank, but I was calling him Zen Kitty by the time I left. On the morning I left, I said goodbye to him, and he indicated that I was allowed to pet. I did, despite the whole “very, very allergic” thing, and his purr was a rumble like a massage chair, almost more felt than heard, but very solid and definite. I suspect Zen Kitty would be a good traveling cat: he seemed to take all things in stride. If he had a voice, I think he might sound like Morgan Freeman.

Another random memory: on the way to the photo exhibit, we stopped at a candy store. It had salt water taffy, which I don’t much like. But the sign by the counter of taffy intrigued me. I can’t recall the exact words, but it was a warning that the candy would taste salty. I bought five pieces. I put the first one — peppermint, I think — in my mouth and was transported back in time. It was my madeleine. A flood of memories, of my grandparents, of sitting in the backseat of the car with my siblings, of sand and salt water and the sound of the ocean… I ate all five pieces in about three minutes and if I ever pass by that store again, I will definitely be getting more. Turns out I do like saltwater taffy, just real saltwater taffy, the kind that actually has salt in it, the kind that tastes like the past.

And a sad one:

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Sealandia didn’t make it through the storm

That’s the catamaran we sailed on during the Best Vacation Ever. She’s still floating, but the damage doesn’t look pretty. Looking at pictures of the British Virgin Islands is so sad. Some of the places that brought me so much joy just a few months ago are basically gone. And people will rebuild, of course. Five years, maybe ten years from now, there will be new places, shiny and fresh. But that doesn’t make the present moment any easier.

It feels wrong to end a post on a sad note: let’s see, homesick and grumpy and sad, this is not the most optimistic post I’ve ever written! But I’m actually doing well, grateful that everyone I know made it through Irma safely, and looking forward to my upcoming adventures. Tomorrow I’m headed to Lake Tahoe, and next week it’ll be the Grand Canyon. Finally!

But first, some time with Grace.

May your days be filled with boredom

Yesterday, I organized S’s pins (the sewing type, not jewelry) by color, in a rainbow of blue, yellow, green, red, white, silver, black. By this, I knew that I was feeling just a wee bit anxious. It was interesting to feel my tension drop as I did it — it was almost like meditating in the sense of peace that came over me as the pins found their proper places.

Of course, Logical Me knows that pins do not have to be organized by color and that the proper place for a pin is anywhere it can be found again, and where it’s not going to inadvertently wind up impaling a hand or a foot or a paw. But at the same time, it was soothing to impose order on the pins. Especially in a world where I can’t impose order on the weather.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the weather where I am. It’s actually been really nice — grey and foggy and cool, with invigorating breezes, just the temperature where a jacket and socks are cozy. But I’ve been worrying about Irma.

Or more to the point, I’m worrying about R. And the rest of my family and friends in Florida, but mostly R. He didn’t evacuate, which is… fine? He’s an adult, making the best choices he can, and I can understand why staying put seemed like the sensible decision. It’s not like he’s living in the Florida Keys or even in Miami, where staying put would have been crazy.

But he is on the coast.

And as of Friday night, Irma appears to be swinging in the direction of his coast.

These lines, from weather.com — “Recent trends in computer models and resulting forecast from the National Hurricane Center suggest Irma will now track a bit farther west. This does not reduce the threat to eastern Florida, but it could drastically increase the threat to the west coast of Florida if this trend continues.” — are not the kind of thing that gladdens a maternal heart.

Logical Me knows that there’s nothing I can do and really no point in hitting refresh on weather.com over and over again. The storm is going to hit when it hits and where it hits. Illogical Me is… anxious. And wishing for more pins to sort.

Instead, I shall go to sleep. And in the morning, I’ll visit the farmer’s market, buy some vegetables, cook something delicious, enjoy the company of my friends, and take a lot of deep breaths.

But to all of my Florida friends and readers — stay safe, stay dry, and may all your Irma stories be really, really boring!

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One of Pam’s daughter’s prized possessions: a hall pass, given to R by his high school science teacher during the year he lived in Seattle. On the other side is a more formal pass. Apparently he was allowed to wander the hallways at will. S has kept the pass for the day she might be able to use it, too. It survived the room purge!

Arcata

In my vague mental plan, I was going to spend some time exploring Oregon this fall. Two things happened to change that plan: 1) Oregon, like far too much of the west, started burning down and 2) my friend Suzanne, who lives in northern CA, had a week off in early September.

I know the wildfires are sort of making the news, but at least in my window on the world, they seem to be overshadowed by politics and floods. And they’re not completely out of the norm: although 2017 is winning for number of fires, 2015 is still in the lead on acreage burned. Both years are statistically significantly higher than average, though, and more to the point, if you’re living in the smoke, the air quality is miserable. I can’t imagine how people with asthma are coping. It’s been years since I even owned an inhaler, but I felt the urge to reach for one through my entire drive through Oregon.

So instead of wandering around Oregon, I drove straight through, with a single, largely sleepless, night at a rest stop, notable only because it was my first ever night at a rest stop and my first chance to discover that rest stops are not very peaceful places to try to spend the night. It might be my last night at a rest stop, too.

I got to Arcata on Friday night. It was nothing like I expected. I knew it was a small town. I knew it was remote. I knew it was foggy a lot of the time, with year-round temperatures in the 50s and 60s. And I guess all of those things are true, but apart from the remote — yes, it was difficult to get to — it was still not what I expected.

It’s actually cute as anything, and not so small. Two bookstores, three movie theaters, multiple grocery stores and sushi restaurants, art galleries and housewares stores and furniture stores… I guess small is relative, but when I think of small, I picture southern small, where a single road has a gas station, a Dollar General, and a donut shop, and that’s considered a town. By that standard, Arcata is a city. But really, it’s the perfect small town from the “quirky town” trope. I saw the town square on Saturday morning, when I was walking Zelda, and immediately thought, “Stars Hollow, I am in Stars Hollow!”

On Saturday, S had to work, so I had a mostly quiet day — much needed after my long drives of the previous two days — hanging out at her house. At lunchtime, though, we met up at the local farmer’s market, held on the aforementioned town square, where I bought some corn & artichokes. But it was insanely hot. I say that as a Floridian. Insanely hot. I’d been promised cool weather and fog: instead I got bright sun, 97 degree temps, and smoke-filled air. The heat broke records, not just for the day but for the entire time temperatures have been measured here. I was very happy to get back to the relative cool of her house, where all the dogs (her two, my two) lay around and panted, while G (S’s husband) and I, sat on our computers, every once in a while saying, “Wow, it’s hot.”

The next morning, we went to the beach with all the dogs. It was glorious. Hot enough that shorts were fine, but with a cool breeze. The dogs were allowed off-leash and three of them ran around like puppies, while even B managed a good long walk and a lot of sniffing at interesting smells. Z chased sticks and splashed into the water and smiled happy dog smiles. Once they were tired out, S and I went to a local fish market and picked up some fresh rockfish, then stopped at a local artisan’s market and admired art and had interesting conversations about the age of some beautiful polished stones turned into jewelry. One green stone, kambaba jasper, was, according to the seller, 3 billion year old fossilized algae from Africa, and a purple stone was charoite from Russia. (Yep, I’m writing that down so that I remember it later.) That evening, instead of having our rockfish, we wound up going out for sushi.

Yesterday, I made us breakfast in the morning, of sautéed carrots, beets, bacon, and sweet potato (previously cooked sous vide, so quick to sauté), over arugula, topped with a soft-boiled egg and some fresh parsley and cilantro. It was heavy on the beets, but really pretty good. I still haven’t mastered sous vide eggs, though. Then we went to the redwoods and wandered up a trail for a while.

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The pack in the redwoods

Our walk was pretty short, because the hills were a little much for B. I probably should have left him at home. I wound up carrying him, but an uphill hike carrying a wiggly dog was a little much for me, too. Next we went looking for wild blackberries, and found plenty. We came back to the house, went down the street to a “block party” fundraiser, ate some delicious albacore for lunch, put some bids in on the silent auction, ate dessert — a gluten-free apple muffin for me — and then came back to the house and got to work.

First, we baked. I made blackberry crisp and Suzanne made blackberry calzone (pie without the pie pan). Next, I prepped baked artichokes with onion, lemon, mint, and olives, one of my favorite recipes from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook[image error].

After that, we seriously got to work. S and G have a storage shed in the back of their house and I think my Seattle efforts inspired S. The shed was (is) stuffed to the ceiling with boxes and bags and furniture and miscellaneous objects of more-or-less emotional significance. We started pulling things out, piling them up in the yard, trying to sort them, with the aim of turning the storage shed into more usable space by emptying out some room. By the end of the day, we’d definitely made the space more accessible, but since neither S nor G really want to get rid of anything, I think the shed will be staying pretty full. But at least they can get to the boxes if they want them now.

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Usable enough that the dog approved.

This morning, S and I headed off to the beach again, bright and early. We were on our way home by 9, so I think we probably got there around 8. It was a different beach, but even more wonderful — big and wide and empty and just a little foggy. I think a lot of people think of beaches as places to go to sit in the sun, but I’m never really interested in sitting on a beach, nor do I much want to go into the ocean. I like watching the waves and taking long walks. On this beach, we could have walked forever if we’d left B at home. He was a trouper, though. He probably walked a solid mile, which is a long, long way for a small dog in congestive heart failure.

Since then, I have been writing and S has been working on her storage shed. But I am about to finish this blog post and drag her away, so that we can go visit the nearest big town, aka Eureka. Yes, Eureka. I seriously hope there’s a nice town sign that I can take a picture of myself by, because it amuses me to no end that I am so close to a town named like one so dear to my heart.

In one final note, I’m really surprised by how much I like Arcata. It wasn’t actually on my list of places that I was thinking about for possible future long-term living, but it has not only joined that list, it’s jumped pretty close to the top. I could see living here. Not in S’s driveway, which sees/hears foot traffic all night long, and not in S’s storage shed, despite its resemblance to a cute tiny house, but it’s a lovely small town. However, that’s a thought for some time far in the future. For today, I should get back to writing Grace, so I can do some more playing later!

Best of August 2017

Today is not the best day of August.

I’m packing up to move on today, after spending almost the entire past month in Seattle. I’m ready to get going in lots of ways — driveway living is only fun for a little while and then campgrounds, with outside space and water hookups and quieter nature sounds, start to seem quite appealing.

But it has been so lovely to slip into my friend Pam’s life for a little while. I haven’t felt like a guest here or even really a visitor and it definitely hasn’t felt like twenty years since we lived in the same city. Instead, I just sort of moved in. I rearranged her kitchen to suit my needs, I established the place on the sofa where I sit when I’m writing in her living room, I left my toiletries in her shower. We’ve gone grocery shopping together, walked our dogs, done laundry… lived life.

Of course, we’ve also done things. We saw a bear (woo-hoo, my first bear!) at Stevens Pass; we camped together at Lake Ozette, including a lovely seven mile hike to the beach and back; we kayaked on Lake Washington; we floated at Green Lake. Well, she paddled on a paddleboard, but I just floated with the dogs.

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Me, floating with the dogs. B is wearing his life preserver, and the raft was very, very slowly sinking. It was lovely.

It hasn’t been the most adventurous month: I stayed in a grand total of five places, and really spent the majority of the month in her driveway. But not every month needs grand adventure.

For the “best of” moment, though, my winner came early: on August 4th, P and R and I were camping at Lake Ozette. Earlier in the day, P and I had taken our long walk to the beach, through beautiful woods, with truly perfect weather. It was gorgeous clear blue skies and sunshine and cool foggy breeze at the beach. Not too hot, not too cold. It was the first time in years that we’d been alone together for any extended period, and our conversation never stopped. P nearly stepped on a snake; we saw deer up close and a bald eagle in the distance.

It was a glorious day. But none of that was what made it the best of August, because that alone would have had some tough competition with the eclipse/bear day. No, what made it the best was at dinner that night. Over grilled sausages, corn-on-the-cob, and salad, the subject of P’s snoring came up. I think I said, perhaps sounding aggrieved, that her snoring wasn’t a problem, it was the not-breathing anymore that was ruining my sleep, and R took that cue and ran with it. By the time he’d finished his extremely calm discourse about how when they’d camped together earlier in the summer, he’d concluded that she was dead, and begun coming to terms with the next steps that he was going to have to take, the practical decisions involved in a tragic untimely death at a music festival, all before her next inhale, I was in tears and P couldn’t speak from laughing so hard. It doesn’t sound funny, I know, but it was. I laughed so hard it hurt.

I don’t know when the three of us will get to go camping together again and I really hope that the next time it’ll be the four of us, including P’s daughter, too (she was at camp). But even if that doesn’t happen anytime soon, I will remember Lake Ozette with pleasure, and am so, so grateful that my fast trek across the country brought me to that place and moment. (And P called a doctor for sleep apnea as soon as we got back to the city.)

I’m not sure what September is going to bring — definitely another driveway, since I’m headed to my friend Suzanne’s now. And hopefully lots of writing. My current version of Grace has taken some unexpected turns, which I guess is good news? It’s interesting, anyway. But Seattle has been a wonderful place to hang out and I’m already looking forward to coming back!

My future career

After I re-organized her kitchen, my friend Pam offered to pay me to help her daughter (S) with her room. I wasn’t so sure about being paid — free parking space, laundry facilities, use of the shower & occasional meals worked for me — but I said sure, I’d be happy to help S. Then I took a closer look at her room.

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Not even sure if she could get to her closet, much less use it.

It wasn’t the messiest room I’d ever seen, but it was pretty impressive. Some of the chaos was stuff that her mom had moved into her room after cleaning the living room while S was away at camp, so she hadn’t been living in it like that, but it wasn’t a one-day sort of mess. It was the type of mess that was going to require an even bigger mess in transition.

So last week, while S was still away, I tackled the first part of the job: organizing stuff.

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Everything soft went onto the bed.

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Stuff to be sorted in boxes and piled high.

I wound up with boxes of stuff that I thought should probably get thrown away — lots of plastic stuff, even more old school books, worn out art supplies, and so on. Also stuff that I thought was probably ready to be donated — anything that a 14-year old had probably outgrown, from clothes to toys. Everything else was sorted: books, art supplies, stuffed animals, dolls, clothes, hats, jewelry, scarves, head bands, knick-knacks, electronics, games, photos, miscellaneous stuff.

When S got home, on Monday, we got to work. We tackled one corner at a time, one set of stuff at a time. We set aside a plastic crate for nostalgia items — things she wanted to keep but didn’t need to have out. Then we looked at and considered every object in her room: did she need it, did she want it, did it bring her joy, was she ready to let go of it? If she was keeping it, where did it belong? Where would she look for it when she needed it?

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Books, art supplies, a few knick knacks in a new corner of the room. Yes, the books are in alphabetical order.

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The half of the closet that can’t be seen is full of boxes for an eventual garage sale, but this half has shoes and outside gear, including bags, organized by type.

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This side of the room wound up looking a little barren, but I’m sure it’s a transitory state. The white shelving unit will eventually go, when she gets a new bed.

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Zelda, admiring the empty floor space. Well, probably not really. She might be wondering where the cushions went.

This is not actually my future career. I think I’m probably too allergic to dust to make a life out of clearing out rooms. But it was very fun and very satisfying!

36 Questions

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I wrote this story back in February when I was trying to do something (anything!) to break my writer’s block on Grace and find my writing motivation again. I liked it enough to post it in the Scribbles section of my website and I think maybe a couple people read it. A few days ago, I sent it to a reader who’d written me a lovely email. She wrote back another lovely email.

As is probably obvious, my perfectionism has been seriously getting in the way of my writing these days. When I first published Ghosts, I was totally relaxed about it. I knew no one would read it, except for my fellow fanfiction writers and readers and maybe a few friends and family. How would anyone find it, after all? In an ocean of books — literally millions of them — Ghosts would be an invisible pebble, dropped into the sea.

That is not exactly what happened.

Which is good news, of course. Great news! Every writer’s dream.

But I’m an editor at heart.

Over the past three years, my perfectionism and my creativity have been at war, with my perfectionism always managing to kick my creativity in the teeth and stomp on her face on the way to triumphant (unproductive) victory.

Until today.

36 Questions is not a perfect story. In particular, there’s one sentence (it includes the phrase “reading was good”) that makes the editor in me go pale and feel faint with dismay.

I don’t care.

My friend Tim said, “This is perfectly and wholly charming and human. I love it!”

My friend Lynda said, “Holy crap…that was a fun little story!! I mean, seriously fun. My cheeks hurt from smiling while reading it. You can quote me on that. ;)”

The reader who wrote me a lovely letter said, “I just finished Thirty-Six Questions with a smile on my face. What a feel good story! I’d love to know how they answer the rest of their questions!”

Another reader who’d had trouble with my mailing list story this week (and who I sent this one to) said, “Enjoyed this short story as well! Truly inspirational romance – I love it!”

It hasn’t been professionally edited (by anyone but me); I designed the cover myself; and I did the production, too, of course. So yeah, I’m breaking all the rules of modern self-publishing. But I think it’s a nice little story. It may or may not be worth .99, depending on the value of ninety-nine cents to you, but I put it in KDP so I’ll have a chance to make it free for a few days later this month.

And meanwhile my creative self is sticking out her tongue, thumbs in her ears, saying “nyah, nyah,” to my editor self. Let’s hope she can keep up the attitude long enough to finish writing Grace and get it published, too.

PS That image up top is a link to Amazon, but here’s another one: 36 Questions[image error]

Grace Lake

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So we were walking along, climbing a hill, on our way to a trail that would lead us to a place called Grace Lake, which I wanted to go to purely because it was going to amuse me to write about visiting Grace Lake instead of writing Grace. I was planning the blog post in my head, about how even though I’m being a terrible writer, I’m having lots of fun experiences.

We’d just seen the eclipse and even though we weren’t in totality, it was pretty damn cool. It hadn’t gotten dark, but the light had definitely changed and there’d been a noticeable drop in temperature. But it was warming up already and the sun was beautifully golden. Nothing like an eclipse for making one appreciate sunshine. There was no real path to where we were going, so we were making our way along rocky ground, through scrubby bushes.

Blueberry bushes, in fact.

I’d gotten out in front with the dogs (three of them, all off-leash), probably because they didn’t care about blueberries and I, having spent hours already this summer picking blueberries, wasn’t all that excited about discovering the random leftover ripe berry on bushes that were mostly over for the season.

I turned and looked back. It was so incredibly beautiful — the mountains, the clear sky, the pine trees — that I pulled out my phone and took the above picture.

And then Reino (in the red shirt in said photo) straightened up. In an absolutely casual voice, he said, “Bear.”

I waited for him to continue the sentence. Bare what?

And then I followed his gaze, out across the hill in the other direction.

Oh. Right. Bear.

No, no, I mean, BEAR!

I did not take a picture. It didn’t even occur to me until later, actually.

Instead, I dropped to a crouch and put a hand on Zelda’s collar. She, of course, was right next to me. I held out a hand for Bartleby, who, upon the indication that a treat might be in store, promptly joined me. He wasn’t overly put-out by the fact that instead of giving him a treat, I grabbed his collar, too.

And then I realized that I didn’t have their leashes. I’d been carrying B up the hill before I set him down to take a picture, so P had my bag with their leashes inside.

So I waited. It felt like a very long time before P made it up the hill to me, but I’m sure it was about a minute. I think we were all torn between wanting to watch the bear and wanting to get the hell out of its way. If it had been going in another direction, we probably would have stood there and admired it, just like we’d been admiring the eclipse. An incredible feat of nature, right? But since it was trundling toward us, or rather toward the blueberry bushes that we were standing among, getting out of its way seemed like a very good idea.

It wasn’t until we were moving away that I realized I was maybe a little scared. I didn’t feel scared, but I know you’re supposed to make noise when you’re around a bear — they don’t want to run into us anymore than we want to run into them. And with three people and three dogs, there was no way a bear would approach us if it realized we were there. All we needed to do was make sure it was as aware of us as we were of it and our encounter would get no closer.

In other words, we needed to sing.

But I could not think of a single song lyric. Seriously, not a one. No Christmas melodies, no hymns, no pop ear worms, nothing. I had nothing. Total adrenaline brain fog.

Fortunately, my singing was not required. But we never did make it to Grace Lake.

Other things I want to remember:

Last Saturday, I met up with some internet friends and played games. (Betrayal At House On The Hill[image error] and Fluxx, specifically). It was very fun. I had the occasional moment of thinking that I really didn’t know the people I was with, but actually it felt like I’d known them forever, that I was a casual friend who lived around the corner and dropped in for games all the time, instead of being a real-life stranger.

On Sunday, we drove up to Stevens Pass. P is volunteering at Stevens Lodge this week, basically a hostel-like place for Pacific Crest Trail hikers to stay. It’s the first time it’s been open in the summer — usually it’s a ski lodge — so she didn’t really expect anyone to show up. Reino and I came up to keep her company and watch the eclipse. But some hikers did show up, so we got to meet some people hiking the trail, which was cool. I don’t really understand the desire, personally. But it’s always fun to talk to people who are in the midst of an adventure.

Before the hikers showed up, I was wondering if I could make eggs Benedict in the hostel-style kitchen. Many, many years ago, it was the thing that I wanted to make — the reason I wanted to learn to cook. I spent several months trying, with some moderate successes, but eventually decided it was just too much of a pain. Hollandaise sauce is hard to get right, and poaching eggs is a pain, and the timing of getting a warm toasted English muffin, plus the sauce, plus Canadian bacon, plus the egg, all right at the same time — it was just too challenging. But I’d brought some gluten-free English muffins at a store in Seattle and I was… well, just wondering whether I could get it right now.

Answer: eh, not exactly. My Hollandaise was a little thick, because I didn’t have enough butter, and my eggs kept rolling off the muffins, which I think means they were not quite done enough. And I didn’t have Canadian bacon, so I used prosciutto. Also the gluten-free English muffins were terrible, so bad that I threw away the leftovers. And I dropped one egg on the floor (literally) and destroyed another one, so that it was more like an egg drop soup egg instead of a poached egg.

But! If you want an appreciative audience for non-successful cooking experiments, you should definitely find some PCT hikers. One was a vegetarian so he got spinach with his muffin and egg and hollandaise, and another was gluten-free and very tolerant about the horribleness of the English muffins. Both were perfectly happy with my rather messy Eggs Benedict.

And it was close enough to good that I’m definitely going to keep trying. The Hollandaise is a bit of a problem — how often do I really want to make something that requires an entire stick of butter? It’s not like I want to use eight tablespoons of sauce. But maybe I can figure out how to make it and freeze it.

And this has turned into a very random blog post, downright disjointed, but I am posting it anyway and then getting on with my day. I feel like I have much to do and not nearly enough hours in the day. Today’s plan includes another sous vide experiment, some room organizing, an attempt at a new screen door — possibly very simplified, because my complicated screen door plans have not been working at all, and yes, some time on Grace. Oh, and also publishing a short story. I made a cover for it yesterday and I’m posting it to Amazon today. Hmm, that’s what they call burying the lede. But yeah, I’ll write more about that when it’s actually available.

Seattle Update

People keep making suggestions about other jobs for me to be doing. The Best Brother Ever thinks I should become a personal chef for someone who has a lot of food restrictions and can’t handle the challenge of eating within them. My friend E thinks I should be packaging my granola and selling it for ridiculous prices. (Someday I am going to do a cost analysis on my granola — I suspect it’s not any cheaper than the ones that companies do sell for ridiculous prices, because I put a lot of good ingredients in it. But it is tasty.)

And my friend P now says I should become a home organizer, traveling around and helping people de-clutter their houses. That’s because I spent the last three days working on her kitchen. I wish I had taken before photos, so that a before-and-after would make sense, but when I first got here, she had no available counter space on which to work. I don’t think I complained too loudly, but I muttered, and eventually I did wistfully say, “I wish I could organize your kitchen.”

To which she replied, “Knock yourself out.”

In my defense, I then asked several times if she was serious. Did she really want someone else going through her stuff? Deciding on the right places for useful things? Pushing her to get rid of the stuff she never used?

Patiently, she answered, “Yes, yes, yes.”

So I did. Her dishes are now stored above her dish rack, so that you can put them away without taking a single step. Her pantry items (formerly stored on a bookcase outside the kitchen) are now in what used to be the dish cupboard; snacks on the bottom shelf, soups and pasta on the next, rices and grains on the third. Her spices (formerly stored in a drawer in living room) are now alphabetized and in an angled double row on an open shelf next to the stove. The tea cups she uses are on the bottom shelf on the sink side, also an open shelf; the cups her guests most often use are stored within reach on the third shelf. The teas are in order — chai, ginger and herb, black — on the second shelf.

Eventually I stopped asking as I moved items to the “to be donated” pile in the living room. We all have those things: the inefficient jars for storing baking staples; the cute plastic dishes for little kids; the hand-me-down second or third crockpot; the fondue pots. She had three of the latter — she’s keeping the mid-size one, letting the other two go.

Or the chipped dishes that have been around forever, the glass jars that might come in handy someday, the abundance of plastic leftover dishes that somehow seem to multiply in the drawers. She still has an abundance of plastic dishes, but only enough to fit neatly into two drawers and she’s going to have to start her glass jar collection anew. The chipped dishes will happen on their own, of course.

I’m not entirely done. I left a pile of stuff on a small table needing to be sorted and one counter was still topped with many glass bottles needing to be recycled last night. But I’m pretty close. And P, whose kitchen was cluttered and overflowing with stuff, now has several entirely empty cupboards that she can start filling.

P tells me I could make a lot of money at it, but I don’t think I actually want to start cleaning out people’s houses for money. Maybe this is just the Floridian in me, but I suspect the jobs would mostly be getting rid of stuff after someone had died and that would be seriously depressing as a way of life. But it was highly satisfying few days.

And it gave me a new piece of my travel plans — I’m not sure what the next week or so will bring, whether I’m going to drive south into the path of the total eclipse coverage, whether I’m finally going to connect with my other WA friends — but at some point after the 28th, I’ll be back here in Seattle. I’m going to tackle P’s teenage daughter’s bedroom once she gets home from her summer vacation with her dad, and I am quite looking forward to it.

In other news, I’m getting a little obsessed with insta-pot soups. The combination of an insta-pot and an immersion blender make vegetable soups trivially easy. Last night I was feeling awful — either a gluten reaction, a mold reaction, or the beginning of a cold — but I threw some onion, carrots, curry spices and chicken broth into the insta-pot and hit the soup button, then when it beeped, added some coconut milk and blended. I wish I’d had some leftover rice, but since I didn’t, I topped some gluten-free bread with butter, a little minced garlic, parmesan cheese, and cilantro, toasted it, cut it into crouton-ish sized pieces and dropped it into the soup. It was delicious. Oh, I added some salt at the end, too.

Given that I felt terrible (and still do, alas), it was a lovely, low-effort meal. I will be eating leftovers for lunch. Maybe with some left-over quinoa instead of toast. If I’d remembered the quinoa yesterday, I would have used it then. Carrot, curry and quinoa soup — doesn’t that sound fancy? It was really just the only non-nightshade vegetable available to me, and I felt too lousy to go to the store.

And that’s a terrible note to end on, but I do have to get to the store today and I can tell already that it’s going to be a very low-energy day. Simple goals: a shower, the store, some more time spent staring at Grace, wondering what Noah’s motivations are. And the dogs, of course, will want to be walked. Huh, I’m feeling tired already. Maybe I’ll start with a little more coffee.

Oh, but since I have no photos — how about a link to an incredibly adorable set of baby photos? Kyla, who comments here sometimes, had her baby last week, and he is gorgeous. If you get a chance, stop by, say “aw,” and wish her well!

Seattle

If I was going to post a picture of the past several days (which I am not), it would be of the little park on the corner of the street. Preferably with a lot of dogs in it. Over the past few days, I’ve spent enough time there that I’m starting to actually get to know some of the neighborhood dogs. Not quite by name yet, but maybe soon.

I’m also developing familiarity with the neighborhood Pokemon players. There’s a yellow team that I’m starting to feel a deep envy for — at least four players, who play together. Every morning or so, I take over the park’s gym, turning it blue, and before too long — sometimes within the hour — they’ve taken it back. It’s fun, but Team Blue could use a little more support. Also there are a ton of Pokemon raids available in Seattle and I’m not good enough, as a solo player, to win any except the easiest. But a team of four probably wins them all. I wish my brother and nephew were here or some of my friends from Florida — we’d be collecting legendary Pokemon right and left. But I don’t think I’m going to manage to convince my friend P or any of her housemates to start playing anytime soon. Maybe I should start working on the teenage boy who lives in the front apartment.

So, yeah, I’ve been parked in my friend P’s driveway for the past several days. They have been lovely days. R and I squeezed in a trip to Value Village, our favorite Seattle thrift shop, and a showing of Spiderman on his last day in the city, before I dropped him off at the train station and waved goodbye. I’m always sad to say good-bye to him. I love how independent and mature he is — it’s fantastic to have an almost entirely self-sufficient 21-year-old — but I do miss him. And saying good-bye with no idea of when I’ll see him again is always hard.

But I got over the pain pretty quick. The next day I did useful stuff, lots of it. Email and writing and laundry and cleaning and working on plans for a new screen door. Zelda walked through the old one, breaking the strings that created the tension that kept it up. I miss it already and I’m pretty sure that no substitute I come up with is going to work nearly as well, but it was pretty fragile for life with two dogs. B used to walk right under it. I’m not surprised that it broke, really, just hoping that I can create something that will let me get airflow through that door without being too inconvenient to live with.

Anyway, after my useful stuff, I went kayaking on Lake Washington with P and J. We saw a beaver! It was much smaller than I would have expected it to be, but the tail was unmistakeable. If my phone hadn’t been buried in a dry bag, I would have tried to take a picture, but we didn’t get close enough that it would have been more than a brown and black blur in the water on a phone photo, anyway. It was sort of thrilling, though, to see an animal that I’d never seen before in the midst of such an urban setting.

That evening, there were five of us for dinner. I’ve been cooking a fair amount, but nothing too exciting. We had summer quinoa bowls one night (greens, quinoa, corn, avocado, salmon, cilantro, with a dressing of sour cream, lime, and garlic) and autumn quinoa bowls another (greens, quinoa, roasted broccoli, baked sweet potato chunks with cinnamon and ginger, spicy roasted chick peas, chicken, with a dressing of thinned hummus with extra garlic). That night, though, we had tacos: I made spicy shredded chicken in the instant pot, which basically involved dumping a couple tablespoons of chili garlic sauce and some water on top of two chicken breasts, and pressure-cooking for 15 minutes on high. Yum. On my first couple bites, I thought it was too spicy, but it was great with avocado and mango salsa, and made for excellent leftovers. If there was any left, I’d be putting it in an omelette this morning.

My big accomplishment yesterday was putting curtains up in Serenity to separate the cab from the rest of the van. I’ve been thinking about doing it for months and my one regret — as it always seems to be with things like this! — is that I didn’t do it eons ago. I bought a Maytex Smart Curtains Ultimate Light Blocker Sheridan Window Panel[image error]in white at Fred Meyer and hung it sideways, so the 50″ side goes top to bottom. That way the dogs can still easily go under it to get to the seats and their bed under the seats. Also, I can push it to the front of the seats, so my back-of-the-seat storage doesn’t get impeded by the curtain when it’s closed. But wow, sleeping last night was so cozy. I’d sort of been vaguely aware of how much light coming in through the spaces around the front window covering kept me restless, but last night I slept like a rock. I think it’s going to be helpful with the heat, too, but the weather has changed today and it’s currently gray and chilly outside, so I’ll have to wait and see on that aspect of it.

Hmm, I think I meant to write about something else, too, but I am being summoned for breakfast, so maybe next time for whatever that was. May all your Saturdays be pleasing!

Bear Creek & Lake Ozette

I feel like a lazy blogger — it’s been over a week since I posted! But I’ve only been a little bit lazy. Mostly I’ve been busy — lots of driving, lots of cooking, lots of socializing. And definitely some playing games and reading when I could have been writing, but the aforementioned driving and socializing left me tired in my quieter hours.

So last Wednesday, R and I left Whidbey Island and drove into Seattle. After a few moments of nervousness headed into the city, I actually felt pretty good about how comfortable it was to drive Serenity on crowded streets. I definitely had a few moments in roundabouts where I flinched, waiting to hear a crunch, but no crunches ever ensued. I think I drove over a curb once, but that was my only driving fail. Yay!

In Seattle, we met up with my friend P, who promptly took me off to the grocery store to buy picnic food and then to a concert: Violent Femmes and Echo and the Bunnymen, outside on the lawn at the zoo. It was perfect weather, warm but not hot, as the day moved into evening. The music was fun, but the people-watching was great. Lots of playful kids, lots of happy adults. My favorite was a woman dressed as if she’d come straight from her corporate job, who knew every word and sang along, with hand gestures where appropriate. Even a week later, thinking about her enthusiasm makes me smile. Contagious joy is the best.

The next day we set off “early” to go to the Olympic Peninsula. I defined early as 8:30 or so, not wishing to be too challenging to R and P, and only later did P say that early was usually more like 5 when she headed to the peninsula. Our day might have been easier if we’d left around then, but so it goes. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful place for a drive.

And more drive. And more drive. Still beautiful, though. Unfortunately, one campground after another was full. We finally found a spot at a Department of Natural Resources place called Bear Creek Campground, mostly because of the luck of our timing. The spot was a disabled access spot, only available to non-disabled campers at 6PM. We drove by it at 6:20 PM, read the sign, and sighed with relief as we pulled in. Fortunately, P had a Washington State Park Discover pass that allowed us to camp there, because it wasn’t the kind of place with a ranger station — only 16 sites and no amenities. But river access, trees, a picnic table, and most importantly, room! It was enough for us.

The next day we left bright and early — not pre-coffee, but pretty close — and headed back to the first campground that we’d checked out, Lake Ozette. We’d checked departure dates the previous day so knew some people were leaving. By getting there at 8, we managed to snag one of their sites. We probably would have been fine if we’d gotten there by 10, too, but I really didn’t want another day of hours of driving. The Olympic Peninsula is undeniably beautiful, but I was starting to feel much too familiar with some of its roads.

At Lake Ozette, we camped. We hiked. We had campfires. We toasted marshmallows. We grilled portobello mushrooms and chicken. We saw deer and snakes and bats. P got stung by something — a bee or a wasp, and was so prepared that she had sting-ease in her backpack! R slept in a hammock, slung between two trees, and I shared Serenity for four nights in a row without feeling cramped. We had no internet or cell service and nobody missed it. Well, okay, that’s not true — I’m pretty sure R was going through withdrawal. But I didn’t miss it.

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Hiking at Lake Ozette

On Sunday, we went back to Whidbey Island for a night. That was a combination of factors — mostly, I think, R was ready to have a real bed again and we were worried about traffic heading into the city. But we had a lovely peaceful night there and a terrific breakfast the next morning, and then headed back into Seattle.

Yesterday was one last tourist day — we went out for pho, visited REI’s flagship store where I bought my own Discover pass and a national parks pass, too, and traipsed through a greenhouse. We were going to go to the movies (Spiderman) but I got anxious about the heat and the dogs, so instead we came back to P’s house, and I made quinoa bowls for dinner. Today, R leaves for Florida. He’ll be back at school within the week.

It’s been an incredible summer — since the Best Vacation Ever in May, I feel like I’ve been on a whirlwind of travel and visits, seeing people and doing things, and this past Washington week has been a wonderful way to cap it off. But as R goes back to school, it’s also time for me to get back to my writing. Grace has been on absolute hold for the past three weeks: I’ve opened the file once or twice, but haven’t written a word. I’m hoping the time off will prove to have been inspirational. Whether it was or wasn’t, thought, settling back into the discipline of writing every day will feel good.