Days 147-151: With peace on earth and good will toward men.

Our holiday plans kind of fell apart thanks to the weather here which looks a little bit like this...

Jessica was supposed to come in from Chicago on Monday afternoon, but the snow kept on coming and coming and she got re-routed to Phoenix and then flown back to Chicago and wasn't able to get another flight to Portland until 9pm Christmas Day which kind of defeats the whole purpose.  JZ was able to get in but there is no way we'd be able to get down to Corvallis for celebrations with his family which was our original plan, so we surrendered to the universe, which has clearly won this round and called it all off.  Jess'll be spending Christmas in Chicago, JZ will enjoy his family, and John and I will be gathering other orphans of the storm at our place tomorrow.  Other folks who weren't able to make their flights out of town and are now at loose ends.  Should be fun, but we were really looking forward to having Jess here and spending the holiday with JZ and his awesome family.  We made this plan in the beer garden at Moody's on one of my last nights in Chicago, and to have it fall through after months of anticipation is making me sad.  Boo. 

However, I think we'll still have a good time.  We hiked through the snow down to the Safeway yesterday with backpacks to lay in supplies, and then made another expedition this morning, this time with a very cabin-fevered dog who needed to run off accumulated ya ya, to pick up the pies that John had ordered weeks ago.  Folks were out and about, digging out cars and tromping about on errands just like us, and we met several of our neighbors, everyone eager to stop and chat, to marvel about the white world we find ourselves in.  Punk romped and snorfled through snow drifts.  

Since then we've been cozied up in the house, making green bean casserole and sugar cookies, listening to carols and watching it go from snow to rain.  The neighborhood kids run back and forth down the streets and people zip by on their cross country skis.  The now tired dog snores and I miss the people I love, with one notable exception.  The guy sitting next to me.  And despite the craziness of the last few days, we're happy and warm and safe.  And lucky.  Very lucky.

Days 97-146: Stuff, more stuff, and also stuff. Did I mention stuff? Because, dude. STUFF.

Yeah.  We're a little busy.  I am a sub-par blogger.

Aw.  Don't pout sad punkin.

The jobby job came through, and it is exactly what I was hoping for.  I am Office Manager for a veterinary practice and I've been working all nutty since early November.  It's stressful trying to absorb so much in so little time, but I am absolutely loving it.  Puppies, people. Near constant stream of puppies.  Oh, dear lord.

We've had loads of visitors, first the lovely Bob and Tasha from Chicago, in town for the Lovecraft Film Festival in early Rocktober.  There was hilarity, good eating, including awesome doughnuts from Voodoo (Doughnuts with Tang on 'em!  I heart Tang.) and some serious waterfall appreciation in the Columbia Gorge.  It was lovely to see friends from home.

Ms. Katie Mae dropped in for the weekend in November, which included more hilarity, more good eating, and a really beautiful hike in Forest Park on the west side of Portland.

JZ was in town to celebrate his mom's birthday and we got to grab dinner before he left, which made me a happy camper.  We spent a very happy Turkey Day with John's Aunt Jackie and Uncle Marty and cousins and their kids down in Junction City.  Hilarity, very good eating and Scrabble.  And finally, friends Chuck and D (the trip to their wedding in summer '07 was what sold me on the Pacific Northwest and started this whole crazy move idea) came down from Seattle last weekend, and again the requisite hilarity and good eating, and then they ended up staying longer than expected when the weather turned.  And, oh did it turn.

Now, I know that to the Chicago eye that looks like nothing, and when we were planning the move we scoffed at the pathetic idea of what we assumed was the puny winter Oregon would throw at us, but let me tell you something people.  We were wrong.  We were so very wrong.  When winter comes to Oregon, it means ice.  A lot of it.  And getting anywhere when that happens in near impossible.  Because of the hills.  And the very small number of snow removal trucks.  Can't drive anywhere.  Which means that getting staff to and from work has been tricky, but we're limping along.  Sooooo, Chuck and D couldn't leave, because they didn't have tire chains, and chains were being required on I-5.  So we hunkered down and John made lasagna and football was watched and it was nice.  Except for the part where I had to go to work.  Booo!  Stupid public transit up and running!  Why can't YOU shut down like everybody else?

But the biggest thing to happen this year, the election.  

We watched the returns come in at our local flamingly liberal coffee house and it was a wonderful experience being in the midst of a crowd who were all as ecstatic as we were when Keith Olbermann made the call.  In the over 100 days we've been gone from the Big Windy Shoulders, I wasn't truly homesick until that moment.  I wanted so much to be there, not in Grant Park, specifically, but just there.  To celebrate this great moment in our country's history with the friends I love.  The tears pouring down Jesse Jackson's face will be the moment I will never forget.

I got up the next morning very early for my first day of training on the job, and I took the dog for a walk while it was still dark, a light misty rain coming down, and I felt so much joy, so much certainty, so much hope for the things to come, and just....so much.  I felt so much.  Such a full heart.

But then there was the sadness of Proposition 8.  While we were still living in Chicago, John and I watched a documentary called For The Bible Tells Me So, the story of several gay people who come from religious backgrounds and how they and their families have struggled to reconcile faith and sexuality.  It's a wonderful film, very honest.  It includes footage of Bishop Gene Robinson's ordination, the first openly gay person to be ordained as Bishop in the Episcopal Church, an event which was incredibly divisive in that institution.  I am not a religious person.  I do not believe in a personal god.  But that footage moved me so deeply because it was bursting with joy and happiness and triumph, and I just don't understand.  Don't they know?  Don't they get that this is the fruit of inclusion?  All this joy, all this wonder, everything we all felt on that Tuesday night watching Barack Obama ascend to the Presidency.  Exclusion is so bitter and small and pinched.  When you embrace, when you throw open your arms and you say yes, when you look beyond difference to a common humanity, and work for a common good, look what happens.  Look what we can do.

Days 80-96: Pretty quiet around these parts.

Yup.  Preeeeetty quiet.

I am hoping to hear about a job very soon.  Two interviews and some paperwork filled out and about a week of waiting to hear for sure, so.  Fingers continue to be crossed.

I've been in a near constant state of low level freakout about the election, as most of you probably know since I've been bombarding you all with emails and Facebook hoohah and so forth.  Rachel Maddow has been helping.  A lot.  If you aren't watching her show on MSNBC already then I can't recommend it enough.  You can watch the episodes online if you don't have cable (like us).  Smartest commentary around and also a truly civil and courteous tone.  Very helpful.  

In the meantime, we're finally unpacked completely.  The final box was full of cds, and all the books are on the shelves and we're finally getting some art on the walls, too.  Another jam has found its way into jars and into our cupboard, plum/pluot with a little raspberry this time.  We're planning a run at apple butter this weekend, since John doesn't seem to think a weekend is complete now without a little canning.  I'm not arguing.  I love me some apple butter.  I only hope the stuff we come up with is anywhere near as good as my Grammer's was.

We've been going to the dog park and picking up awesome sticks...

But mostly, I can't stop noticing the trees and the colors.

Unbelievable.  Also?  Hills.  Portland has hills.  Chicago?  Not so much.  In Chicago the thing I noticed all the time was the city.  Buildings and traffic and noise and smells.  Here I just can't stop looking at nature.  The birds.  The plants.  Everyone has gardens.  The hills are a mix of evergreens and spectacular fall colors and the light on the mostly bright, sunny days so far this October is pure gold.  We're living on the east side of town, which is far more residential and our street and neighborhood is pretty low-key.  We went to the west side of town Saturday night to go to a performance by a small local opera company (in a bar!  like edgy Chicago theater!  neat!) which was downtown, and then ate dinner in the area that is exactly like Lincoln Park in Chicago (swanky shops, expensive houses and upscale doodads).  Being in the midst of all that was disorienting and a little strange.  The life we've been leading, or at least the life I've been leading since we've been here is so quiet and small.  It feels incredibly good.  After being in the bustle it was so good to come home.

Days 76-79: More company! And our first experiment with jam.

When we lived in Topeka, KS my momma was friends with a lovely woman who would stay with me when my folks went out of town, who became one of those people who are much more than family friend, for whom there is no really good title except a family one.  She became Aunt Kippy (her childhood nickname).  

Aunt Kippy moved to Chicago in the early 90's, so when I went there to go to college I had family nearby, just in case.  I used to house and cat sit for her when she went out of town, and she would take me out to brunch or dinner every now and again to make sure I stayed in one piece.  My mom would stay with her when she came into town, and her apartment was the place where I found out my father was gone.  I love her dearly, and even though we haven't always been in close touch, seeing her again is just picking up the threads of a conversation we started a long time ago.  As luck would have it she lives in Seattle now with her marvelous boyfriend Dean, and the two of them came down to visit not only us but her brother Chris this weekend.  

On Friday we went to a French bakery and cafe for lunch, up in the Alberta district.  We caught up and bought some pastry and adorable smiley apple and pear shaped cookies....

 and took a picture of really cute graffiti....

 before heading over to the International Rose Test Garden, which is phenominally beautiful, even in October.  I can't wait to see what it looks like in June.  

On Saturday it was a gorgeous sunny morning, so John and I took Punkus to the dog park and walked to Home Depot, then met Kippy, Dean, brother Chris and his son Seven for a dinner of incredible Thai food.  Certainly the best Thai food I've eaten here so far, maybe the best I've ever had.  Wow.  I can't wait to go back there.  We then piled into the car, literally, and found a coffee shop for a quick after dinner drink.  Afterwards, we said goodbyes and John I walked home under the clear starry sky and a mostly full moon.

Sunday was another spectacular morning and we found one of the few still open farmer's markets and bought a whole lot of tomatoes, some garlic and a flat of three pints of raspberries and three pints of blueberries.  

After a run to the grocery store for some canning supplies, we made a first attempt on jam, blueberry and raspberry.  

It was SPATTERY.  We ended up with about 1/4 of the jam splattered on the floor and the stove and the wall and in the dog's bowl and on John's pants.  Our candy thermometer wasn't working terribly well, and its supposed to be 220 degrees or so before you pour it into jars, so we got it up to something I'm going to call "angry boil" before we took it off the heat.  Not sure if it was totally right, but it seems to have set up beautifully and the color is spectacular.  Yea!  Jam!

We also made tomato sauce and canned that.  We're 80.  But canning is awesome!  John says this is only the beginning, and next is making jam with no sugar, just apple juice.  And then making our own apple juice.  And then, naturally, world domination.  It is only a matter of time, people.

Days 49-75: We make this house our own which involves a whole lot of trips to Home Depot. They love me there.

It took us awhile to get the internet tubes hooked up at our house, which meant walking down to the wifi cafe with the spotty connection should one wish to check one's email, and I had my hands full yanking out carpet and padding in the upstairs which led to pulling out carpet staples one at a time which led to stripping off old carpet pad adhesive in a seven step process with smelly, smelly chemicals, which led to painting the floors a beautiful dark brown which led to me being a very happy camper!  Because, dude.  That carpet was nasty.

Not having internets at home made blogging and job searching a little difficult, so both kind of had to wait a bit.  The job search is now in full swing and so blogging was, of course, my next priority!  Except that now I've pulled off all the hideous vinyl wallpaper in the dining room so now its time to sand and paint!  Joy!  Home Depot here I come!  Again!

There is also Ms. Punk to consider, of course.  And despite being a wee bit prissy about the wet grass (not at all new), she seems to be loving it here.  It doesn't hurt that one of us is mostly around all the time.  Nope, that doesn't hurt at all.  We've been going to the local dog park every other day or so, and she's also thoroughly enjoying lots and lots of naps in her chair.  John decided that she should have a chair in our front room that she's allowed to get up on and see out the window to watch the neighborhood goings on.  My mom gave us a big armchair that fits the bill and this has been a pretty big hit with her.  

She also now has the opportunity to freak out at a mail carrier once a day, something she was not able to do in our old apartment.  She may be enjoying that part a little too much, but it is nice to have a mail alarm of sorts.

Last weekend we had Bob and Tasha, friends from Chicago, here in town with us which was serious fun.  The weather obliged us being completely Pacific Northwest-y with the intermittent (and sometimes not so intermittent) rain.  This did not even remotely stop us from going out to the spectacular Columbia Gorge area and looking at really beautiful waterfalls, and doing some exploration of the city.  Seeing familiar faces made me super happy an it was fun to share some of the things we're loving here, like our local farmer's market and the fact that apple trees and blackberry canes are all over the place and the yummy all night doughnut place with weird doughnuts and the clean and mercifully quiet public transit system and on and on.

So I'm continuing to look for jobs, and John is currently doing a four month contract position with Intel,  and we're doing pretty darn good.  We're all signed up with a car sharing service now which means we'll be going hiking very soon, so hopefully I'll have more photos of a happy mountain dog to show you very soon.

Days 45-48: More lots and lots of driving. In a really big truck! A yellow one!

Once we got back to Denver, we spent two days running errands and getting everything ready for the move on Monday, moving furniture down to the storage unit and finding all the stuff we had unpacked at my mom's house.  I made a run to Costco with my mom which involved buying an absurd amount of toilet paper and paper towels, and also an area rug.  Costco.  Always surreal.

Monday morning John picked up our truck and Punk and I met him and the movers at the storage unit.  We got on the road by noon and drove the first leg of the journey to Salt Lake City through the most boring and unattractive bits of Colorado and Wyoming.  Except for some really neat rock formations in Wyoming.

Spirits in the cab of Behemoth II were high!

Allegedly the part of Utah we eventually drove through was pretty, but sadly we were in the dark by then.  We hit the hotel on the north side of town and passed out.

We breakfasted and mounted up the next morning and did get to see a bit of the pretty of Utah before plunging into more boring in Idaho.  Except for a nifty gorge we drove over on our way to lunch.  GORGE!

With a golf course in it!  Before we left Colorado John had spoken to his aunt and uncle who live near Eugene and they had warned him about two things regarding eastern Oregon.  One, that parts of it would look very much like Martian desert, and two, that we would eventually hit lava fields and not to be too surprised when we did.  The terrain of eastern Oregon is like no other place I've ever seen.  When we first crossed the border it was fairly standard hilly farmland and green fields, but then it just got weird.

Beautiful, but weird.  After passing thought the Martian desert the highway descends into an area called The Great Basin, which is an enormous plain in the midst of the mountains, home to the longest, straightest road I have every driven in my life.  We drove until after sunset without a curve or a turn, past farms and dirt roads that branched off left and right.  Slightly surreal in a sort of David Lynch-y way.

Eventually there was a curve.  We stopped for the night in Burns, Oregon, a main street town which looked very like every other main street town I've come across in the midwest.  We found and checked into our motel, and walked the dog down the aforementioned main street to the only open restaurant, a Chinese place.  We passed and were passed by a whole lot of pickup trucks and there were some guys with weird vibes hanging around outside the bar we walked by, and the local bank had a lot of dead animals and pelts hanging on its wall, clearly visible from the sidewalk after hours.  All in all the same strange, David Lynch-y feeling from the whole nighttime town.  We carried our take out back to the room and ate a whole lot of fried things while watching the most recent Die Hard movie on HBO, which was surprisingly awesome!  We woke up a little late the next morning, got coffee and pastry from the main street coffee shop, full of cotton candy haired little old ladies and farming gentlemen into their third cup of coffee talking about environmental legislation, and got on the road.

Fernambo Llama enjoys his mornin' java.

The drive to John's aunt and uncle's place was more or less straight west up and over a pass in the Cascades, through National Forests.  Really beautiful.  Although we saw even more of the pine beetle devastation that we'd seen in Colorado.  For those of you who haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth (and I would STRONGLY encourage you to do so) the pine beetle is a parasite that attacks and kills lodgepole pines.  Usually it is killed off by at least two weeks of hard freeze, but we haven't had that in some time due to global warming, and so huge swaths of pine trees throughout the western United States, from Alaska to New Mexico which should look like this....

....now look like this.

We saw a staggering amount of this in Colorado, and it was sad to see it here as well.  But there you have it.  We also finally passed the lava fields that John had been so excited about.  LAVA FIELDS!

Happy John!

We arrived in Junction City in the afternoon and John's Uncle Marty drove out to meet us and guide us down the back roads to their farm.  I can't tell you how much we loved being there, all three of us (especially Punkus).  It is exactly the kind of place John and I would love to have someday.  Acreage enough for a big vegetable garden and pasture, apple trees and blackberry bushes and a hundred year old oak tree.  Small house with room enough for company.  It was like coming home.  Jackie and Marty were incredibly welcoming and delighted to see us and since John hadn't seen them or their daughter Cathy for some time, busied themselves getting caught up and Punk and I played some fetch and I tried to keep her from harassing the sheep too terribly.  

Cathy works for a sheep farm further north and has four sheep of her own who live with Jackie and Marty and are spoiled rotten by Marty, who feeds them lots of apples and saltine crackers.  It was hilarious to watch Punk explore her biological imperative through the fence at the sheep, who initially resisted, but then realized THEIR biological imperative and ran from her.  Very fast.  And kind of resentfully.  With lots of "meeeeeeh" sounds.  Cathy also took me to the neighboring farm where her horse is boarded and I got to soak up some horse love and hand feed some apples, which made the 12 year old in me who never, ever got over her horse thing very, very happy!  Next time we go down to visit Cathy has promised to take me riding and to that I say squee.  SQUEEEEEEE!!

The next morning we woke up early and walked down the lane a bit with the pup and soaked up the quiet and the lovely.  

After breakfast, Marty and Jackie loaded us up with veggies from their garden and zucchini bread and we traded some of our peach jam for some of Jackie's currant and raspberry and Punk said goodbye to her new sheep friends.  Who were very happy to see her go.  Jackie and Marty had us follow them up to Cathy's place, which was on our way north to Portland, and we got to see more family and Cathy sent us away with dried lavender and a new dog bed that she made herself.  The drive up to Portland took no time at all and then we were HERE!  What the hell?!??!?!

We met the movers, and it took about two hours to finally unload our stuff for good, and we called a pizza place, set up our bed, put food in our faces and then collapsed in a big pile of exhausted and finally home in our own house.  Our own house!

Days 38 - 44: We have a house! Holy crap!

On the morning of Labor Day Patty and David drove us to the airport YET AGAIN, and we flew up to Portland to spend four days finding a place to live.  We landed and picked up our rental and immediately went to an open house.  Cute place, but not for us.  For the next 24 hours we went to house after house after apartment and almost got into a couple of fights about navigation and ate some really good Thai food in the Alberta Arts District and then FINALLY at 4pm on Tuesday we saw the house wanted.  It was available for rent right away, close to a grocery store, close to the train and multiple buses, quiet street, great rent and best of all A HOUSE!  Not an apartment!  With a yard where the dog can sun herself and we can plant a garden.  A GARDEN!!  Im going to have herbs!  And lavender!

And a mature lilac off the front porch, a mature laurel and big beautiful fig tree in the back yard.

FIGS!  You're all getting fig jam for Christmas.  So now we have an address!  And lots of space for you to come and see us!  We'll have a guest room, and John will have a separate office and I'll get to have a work room for sewing and projects.  The interior needs work.  A lot of it.  Horrible carpet that has to come up right away, and wallpaper in the kitchen and dining room that'll have to come off, too.  We have permission from the landlord to do whatever we want to, since anything we do will raise the property value.  But it has four bedrooms, one bathroom and a basement.  And the rent is less than what we paid in Chicago.

SO EXCITED!  I'm going to start ripping out the carpet in the upstairs as soon as we get there.  Then once we figure out what we have underneath that, we'll decide where to go from there.  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!  Melanie, if you're reading, call me!  I'm going to need advice on what to do, especially if the wood underneath ends up being painted, which is what I suspect.  I'm thinking of Flor tiles, modular carpet tiles that you can put in wall to wall, or area rug style.  No padding, doesn't stick to the existing floor, and when you move, you either take them with you, or send them back to Flor for recycling.  Neato.  And really cheap.

Our application was approved by our curmudgeonly yet kind of sweet landlord and we spent a couple of days exploring the new neighborhood.  We came back to Denver on Friday, and tomorrow we'll pick up the new Behemoth, load up and drive the first leg to Salt Lake City.  45 days after leaving Chicago.  I'll be posting some photos from the road, and we'll stop for a night with John's aunt and uncle near Eugene, and oh my sweet lord, we live in Portland.