The Everywhereist

Debris on the side of the road in one of the townships in Cape Flats.

-

Rand and I have been talking a lot about entitlement lately. It’s something that comes up a lot for both us. I think we’re both incredibly scared of forgetting just how damn lucky we are.

Every now and then, I take a minute think about how charmed my existence is: how every single day is full of beautiful things and people and good health and the occasional cookie or four.

(more…)

(Note: I just got back from South Africa yesterday. My brain has absolutely ZERO idea what time it is. I contemplated blogging last night, but I was deliriously tired, and acting slightly more crazy than normal. At one point, I may have fallen over my husband in the kitchen because I wanted to bite his arm. When he didn’t acquiesce, I started whining like a four-year-old.

So he let me bite his arm. 

I’m still kind of out of it, but I’m pleased to say that the attempts at spousal cannibalism have become far more infrequent since that episode. I’m going to try and get my bearings over the next few days. In the meantime, I’ll be posting about a few trips that we had prior to South Africa, that I haven’t gotten around to telling you about. Enjoy.)

-

-

Like any good alchemist, I spend a lot of time at home trying to turn lead into gold. Or, more precisely, flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and a bit of vanilla into cake.

Same thing, basically.

(more…)

Before we dined there, we had trouble discerning what Blue’s Egg was. The menu was eclectic and high-brow, but the setting (in a small strip mall) suggested a casual diner.

-

In truth, it was both – that blissful mix of homey and familiar, strange and exotic. Plus, there were cookies topped with bacon.

(more…)

-

There are moments of my life that are so perfect, so ridiculously wonderful, that eloquence fails me.

You’d think that those would be the times when words would come most easily. But when you are surrounded by poetry, it is incredibly hard to create more of it. You simply look around, stupefied, and think, “Heh. This … awesome. Life … good. I … happy.”

That’s what happened one night when we were walking along the river in the Milwaukee.

Yes, Milwaukee. (I will kindly ask that you not look so surprised.)

(more…)

-

It’s funny how quickly the bizarre becomes normal.

How things that are strange and weird become familiar and every day. So that after a while, we forget that they’re even all that strange, until someone else points it out to us.

When we first moved back to Seattle from Florida, nearly 20 years ago (good heavens, the years. They are slippery little suckers, are they not?) my mother and I were faced with an odd problem. Our home felt far too empty. My brother had gone off to college, so it was just the two of us, living in far more square footage than we’d ever known.

We dealt with the problem in the usual way: we bought a mannequin.

(more…)

-

Have you ever fallen in love with a place that you’ve visited, but you can’t really figure out why? There’s just something inexplicable about it that makes you happy to be there?

And the more you try to describe your rationale for loving it, the crazier you sound? To the point where you might be clutching someone’s hand, trying to convince them of the magic of this place? And because you’re so damn passionate about it, you fail to realize that the person you’re talking to is somewhat scared for their life? And that you’re now frothing at the mouth and screaming about homemade fudge and free parking on weekends and you look positively mental? This doesn’t just happen to me, right? RIGHT?

Well, that’s kind of how I feel about Jacksonville, Oregon.

(more…)

There’s an old Cary Grant movie called People Will Talk. If you haven’t seen it, go do so now. I’ll wait.

…

Wasn’t it amazing? I know. I love it, too. I have a weak spot for Cary Grant. Actually, I have several weak spots for Cary Grant, and they’re all located around my knees, or thereabouts.

And in that movie, he kind of reminds me of Rand.

Oh, STOP rolling your eyes. I need none of that nonsense. A girl in love is entitled to see things how she wants. If I want to think that cake is reasonable breakfast food and that I can pull off skinny jeans and that my husband is Cary Grant-like, I can. A little self-delusion never hurt anyone. Without it, Madonna would have never tried acting and JLo would have never tried singing. THINK ABOUT THOSE GEMS OF ARTISTIC MERIT, why don’t you, before you knock it.

(more…)

Lunch at the Arts Factory: plantains with pomegranate sauce and goat’s cheese.

-

It’s hard to hate everything about a destination.

Don’t get me wrong – there are certain specific places that I hate with a burning passion (there is an Ashland hotel that is right now on my OH-NO-YOU-DIDN’T list, and my blood pressure spikes just thinking about it), but it’s hard to hate everything about a country, or city, or town.

(more…)