The Raven and other thoughts

In the holiday spirit of Halloween, all I can think of is Edgar Allan Poe. He's really the reason that I ever took an interest in poetry. Well, actually, it's because my dad would read me Poe until I could read it myself. My first and favorite poem was "The Raven"; I was in first grade. I even memorized the first stanza or so. Anytime an opportunity came up with the "--or" sound, we would rhyme out loud, "Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore!'"

In the evenings, after elementary school and before I got into after-school activities like bowling and band and basketball, I would change in to my pajamas and curl my lanky limps on my dad's lap. Together, we read books like The Mad Scientist Club and The Yearling. I was a fast learner when it came to reading, and I have him to thank. We read most every night, as long as we were done before eight o'clock when Mom would watch "Wheel of Fortune" and we'd all race to solve the puzzles before the contestants. Some nights, we only got a few pages read, but it always felt like an accomplishment.

It especially felt that way because I was still just starting to read. We had a few kid's books but not many, save for an entire Dr. Seuss collection. They were fine, but I liked the books that Dad gave me. They suited us in some way. They seemed boyish, but I loved being a Daddy's girl. I would read aloud until I got to a word that I didn't know or couldn't pronounce, and Dad would help me out.

I just got a flash of the To Kill a Mockingbird film scene of Atticus and Scout reading together. How lovely. (Dad, you give Gregory Peck a run for his money!)

Photo from: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3306404608/tt0056592

So "The Raven" was way up there on our reading list. I wonder if my dad ever got tired of hearing that same poem again and again. I just loved the rhymes and the stanzas and the eery feeling that I certainly didn't understand at six and seven years old.

Sometimes, even now, as I age into my twenties, I still sit on my dad's lap when we're at the table after dinner or at a holiday get-together. At first he always whines that I'm too big for that, but then he laughs and wraps his arms around me in a squeeze, saying, "Aw! My Daddy's girl!" We don't read together anymore because now, I do the writing.

Here is a link to 'The Raven' by Poe.

Oh, and my dad's birthday was October 30th! Happy birthday, Dad!

Job Anxiety

It suddenly dawned on me this morning that October is almost over. October was my first full month of unemployment (I still had some school stuff going on through half of September). At this point, getting a job feels surreal, like something that will never happen. I'm so thankful to be finally getting calls about interviews, but even yesterday, as I toured through a potential workplace, it all felt so foreign; could this be a place that becomes familiar to my everyday? I hope so: still waiting for a phone call...

I think more about getting a job than anything else. I keep having the feeling like before I went to Italy--I knew that I was going to go, but I had no idea what it would be like, so I just tried to picture it in my head, and it never felt real until I was finally there. Currently, I'm still in the "will I ever actually get there" phase; I know that it will happen. I imagine going in to some building and being friendly with co-workers and being organized and on-task and busy. I really miss it. I remember talking at the end of last semester as I was first preparing to enter the work world.

"What will I do? Go to work? Come home and go to bed? I don't understand!" I'm so used to being that person who wants to take care of everything all at once and have everything impossibly under control. Well, I can at least say that I have been the complete opposite of that lately, and now I'm afraid to get back into it! I've been on overdrive for the past six years, blazing through education like it was just another thing to check off my to-do list. And God knows that I love to mark things off my lists.

So now I'm left wondering what some middle ground might look like, and I think that I'm on the right side for getting started; I can start from scratch and add pieces as I go. Hopefully.

I just need somewhere to actually start. In my interview yesterday, they were sounding so enthusiastic, and then one of the women said, "So this is your first work experience outside of college?" Yes, yes it is; please don't let that deter you! I am a hard worker! PLEASE! I really am at the point where I want to beg, but of course, I keep composed and ensure them that my experience in college shows my capability. Does college count for anything? Come on!

--SIGH--

I guess all that I can do is keep trying and hoping and praying that something will come through soon. There are a lot of temporary positions opening up also, with the holiday season approaching.

I think I can. I think I can. And yet, it feels out of my hands in many ways; I can only do so much.

Side note to Pennsylvania: Hopefully I don't run out of things to read in the meantime, given my limited supply of books since someone is holding my other books hostage, HINT HINT.
(I hope you can hear my tone, since it's kind of hard to determine through text, but you know me, so you know how I would say that, just as I can imagine your reply.)

Reminder

The rain feels refreshing like everyday is clean and pure and newer than the dry days of leftover dirt hanging around on the sidewalks.

Remind me of this feeling in the spring months when I am soggy and shriveled and feeling un-revivable.

A lot of words about food and only food

In my long days of unemployment, I have found that most of my days revolve around when I am going to eat. It seems to be the most important thing at current, and with my new on-take of veganism, I have much to explore.

There are several things that I have learned through this adventure thus far:

1. Recipes are just suggestions.
2. 10% of ingredients are optional. 
3. When it doesn't work out, eat it anyway.
4. Three home-cooked meals a day is way too much food.
5. YOU CAN COOK FOR ONE PERSON.

1. Recipes are just suggestions. 

Many of you may be familiar with the terribly addicting site, Pinterest. For a while, I sat idly by while the people I follow pinned recipes and photos of entire meals and unique ways to cook a vegetable. I'd scroll down and down and wonder why on earth people would post these tempting recipes and not make them. It was probably then that I decided to use Pinterest for its real purpose (aside from finding hilarious photos of dogs with funny captions) and start pinning recipes. Then! dundundunnnnn I was going to make the recipes. gasp!

Once my "food" and "vegan" board were plump with recipes, I began. I started with smoothies. I mean, how hard could it be? Not very, I learned. This is also where I discovered that recipes are suggestions. It doesn't matter if you include one cup of mango or one and a quarter cup or one and some unmeasurable amount of mango that resulted from turning the bag upside down over the blender. Further, who knows how much avocado makes a half cup mashed? The blender is present for the mashing part, so just through in some avocado. This, of course, is referring to one of my favorite smoothies: the mango avocado smoothie. Yum! 

How does one make a mango avocado smoothie? Throw in some mango, some avocado, a big glob of vanilla yogurt, a few squeezes of lime juice, a tilt of sugar, and ice. Blend it all. Too thick? Pour in some water or orange juice or apple juice or anything liquid. I like to match the vanilla yogurt flavor with a packet of vanilla protein powder. I just realized how un-appealing I made this smoothie sound. I'm not trying to sell it, but you just have to trust me that it's delicious. (P.S. I don't actually use yogurt; I use cultured almond milk, so in other words, almond yogurt. Kind of.)

So that's how I got into this. And today, I definitely took a recipe and made it my own. It was for creamy potato soup. I've had these potatoes sitting in the cupboard for weeks, and before I went to Arizona, I blanched a bunch of vegetables--peppers, carrots, eggplant-- so I decided it's time to use them. Oh, and I had an open carton of vegetable broth that expired last week, so I figured I should use that up too. 

The eggplant was gone (to be explained later), so I thought I'd shoot for a potato soup. I did a Google search for "vegan potato soup recipe" and found one that claimed to be quick (I don't have a crockpot) and simple: that's my kind of meal. 

In my efforts to lead a microwave-less life, I boiled the potatoes and got started on the rest. Well, the recipe didn't even call for peppers or carrots or garlic, just onions. Oh well, they were all going in! I heated them all on the stove and sat them aside for later. I warmed up the broth and soaked the potatoes in it for a while. Meanwhile, the recipe called for cashew butter, soy milk, and nutritional yeast in the blender. What I put in? Whole raw almonds and vanilla almond milk. Close enough. As I poured in the vanilla almond milk, I thought, "I knew there was a reason  I wanted to buy plain almond milk..." Mmm vanilla almond potato soup...

I blended some of the potatoes and the broth in with the almonds and milk to make a thick, creamy broth. In the meantime, I heated up some black beans and boiled up some Ramen noodles to add; I like thick, chunky soup. When it was all said and done, I had included very few of the ingredients from the recipe, but it still worked out. That's right, even though it had a very strong, sweet vanilla tainting, it turned out to be a perfect balance, making a well-rounded soup. I do have to admit though, the Ramen noodles were a bit much; too non-traditional for a potato soup.

2. 10% of the ingredients are optional.

Now to the eggplant. First off, when blanching eggplant, I learned, just go for it; it doesn't look right (it probably wasn't), but just go for it. While Laura was visiting, I was excited to test out some of the meals that make enough for several people or don't store as easily. Thanks to my college's cafeteria, which made either rice, tofu, rice with tofu, or eggplant parm in the vegetarian section, I immediately knew what to do with my eggplant. The problem, however, was the parm. I once again did a Google search for "vegan eggplant parm" and the results were perfect. I decided to combine a few recipes, but I took the "cheese" sauce idea from one of them and began my search for the ingredients. 

Tahini? What on earth is tahini? Awesome; that's what. It's like sesame hummus, and it makes great cheese sauce or a great cracker topping. So I got tahini. Nutritional yeast? Uhh, what's the difference from baking yeast? "Well, there are different vitamins in nutritional yeast that set it apart; also, it is used for different purposes, mainly to..." I zoned out. The girl behind the counter was awfully nice to try to describe it to me, but the point was that she began by saying that they didn't have any. Therefore, it wasn't an important ingredient.

By the end, I blended the tahini sauce, as I came to call it, ingredients into a runny, milky mesh, where, again, the vanilla in the almond milk smelt overpowering. A little wary, I poured the sauce over my breaded and tomato sauced eggplant, stuck it in the oven and waited. The result? The sauce became thick and golden in the oven. I think Laura and I were both shocked by how well it turned out. Who needs nutritional yeast? Not us.

Further, the tahini sauce proved to be a great addition to other meals. For example, I poured it over a portabella mushroom filled with tomato sauce to make a "portabella pizza". And finally, my favorite, I made a sort of alfredo-style sauce with it for over noodles. Thinking back to my days of making a lot of pie, I remembered using corn starch to thicken the filling. So I added some to the sauce and stirred constantly over low heat until it turned into a thick paste for my noodles. I was pretty shocked that it actually worked.

3. When it doesn't work out, eat it anyway.

Not every experimental attempt at a recipe works out. That's the worst because you're still stuck with it. I really really really hate wasting food, so I try to use everything that I can (hence the crazy conglomerate in my potato soup). As a result, when it doesn't taste quite like it should, three options remain: add something to it to make it better, pair it with something complementary on the side, or just suck it up and eat it. 

I made that mistake with one of my smoothies. It was one of my favorite smoothies: green! Throw in some kale, some spinach, a pear, a frozen banana, and some orange juice. Well, with some of the other smoothies that I make, I add flax oil just for the sake of its health benefits. It really is an odd addition because, well, it's an oil. After blending up my green smoothie, I thought, "Why not add some flax oil?", as if the smoothie didn't already offer a wealth of vitamins and nutrients. What a mistake!

As soon as the oil touched my smoothie, it started bubbling! It was like some odd, witch's concoction. I tried to stir the oil in and it sizzled and sent more bubbles to the top. Oh boy. I knew that I still had to drink it, so I decided to pair it with low-salt cashews. The slight salt took away from the bite of the fizz, and though I could imagine it tearing away at my stomach lining, it still tasted good, and at least it had a sort of chaser with the nuts.

Another instance was with carrots. Who can mess up carrots? I mean, really. It was here that I learned that some recipes do require measuring--or at least paying attention to an idea of how much of something to include. I was roasting my chopped carrots in the oven and added some balsamic and some honey--a combination that I was already wary of--as well as some other spices and such. Well, I never did go back to check how much of each I was supposed to put in, but it was clear that something wasn't right. They had this odd combination of being super sweet and then extremely bitter. It was like eating a Sour Patch Kids gummy in vegetable version. While it was an odd taste, luckily, Sour Patch Kids are one of my favorites! It was just a bit embarrassing because I had a friend over for dinner, and I had these ridiculous carrots!

4. Three home-cooked meals a day is way too much food.

Like I said, I've been home a lot. As a result, I was putting a lot of time and effort into each meal. Oatmeal with fresh cut fruit for breakfast; a big salad with tons of toppings for lunch; a smoothie and trail mix for dinner. It's just too much! One of my friends laughs constantly my choice to go vegan.

"You must always be hungry!"

"No! I have just the opposite problem! I eat so much that I'm constantly full! The past few days, I've forgotten what hunger even feels like! It's terrible!" It was then that I realized that I just could not eat three meals a day.

This idea bothered me a lot, and it still does because it's what we're all so used to--breakfast, lunch, dinner. I'm learning, though, that it's okay to snack instead of eating a lot in one sitting. At first, it seemed so easy to justify eating this great meals because they're so healthy, and I need to make sure to hit all of the food groups. Being overly conscious of how much you eat and what you eat and if you're eating the right things, though, is a lot of work and enough to drive you mad and just say, "I want a cookie!" and reach for a bowl of cereal to satisfy the sweet tooth. And that's one that I still haven't figure out because smoothies are really sweet; oatmeal is really sweet; why do I still want cookies and ice cream? I've been spoiled by watching years of the Cookie Monster on Sesame Street instead of the "Cookies are a sometimes snack" Monster.

5. YOU CAN COOK FOR ONE PERSON

I was really nervous when I started living on my own that I was going to succumb to Ramen every night and cereal every morning and peanut butter and jelly for lunch. It's an especially easy habit to get into when you don't have many ingredients around. It's taken me a while to get a few essential spices and to have some ingredients that are in many recipes. But now that I do, I've learned that there is so much to be made!

My second query was how to make good meals but not eat it for a week before I made something else because I had too much of that one thing because I am only one person. This is a lot of where the "recipes are suggestions" comes in because I discovered that I could visually half a recipe by just adding less of everything.

One day, I made these lettuce wraps with quinoa and black beans and avocado and peppers and the like. They were delicious, healthy, and I didn't have to worry about eating it for a week because I made enough for a meal and some leftovers for another meal at a later date. This was exciting: to be able to make good meals that would feed me more than once without going bad or getting tired of it.

And that one was especially a favorite because it was delicious, healthy, and pretty! I love the colors! Then again, avocado has a way of doing that to food. 

These are all things that I thought about today while I stirred my potato soup. I thought about some of the myths of cooking and some of the ways that I--someone with little cooking experience--decided to tackle the myths and make good food...and sometimes not so good food. I know that if I were a good, interesting creative nonfiction kid, I would have interwoven some personal experience or dilemma with the process of cooking or the variety of meals. Unfortunately, the cooking and recipe-mending are all that I have to share today, and I hope that it is enough and is as filling in words as it's filled my belly the past few weeks. 

My secret existence

I've come to the conclusion that I'm just not a person who should live with other people. I'm a terrible housemate. I wasn't happy at my other apartment because it was too dirty. Now, dare I say it, I'm not happy here because it's too clean! Yes, you heard me, it's too clean!!!

So maybe it's not exactly the cleanliness that's the problem. The problem is that we, the renters, are expected to act as if we do not live here at all. If we show any signs of our presence, we are left notes on torn strips of paper taped to whatever wrongdoing we've committed.

At first, I got a lot of notes as I tried to understand which items were compostable versus recyclable and which items count as "personal garbage" to be thrown away in my bedroom versus "not personal garbage" which is safe to throw away in the kitchen. For example, when I first moved in, I realized that I didn't have a fitted sheet for my mattress, which is larger than my last apartment, so I bought a fitted sheet and threw the plastic wrapper in the kitchen garbage. It was promptly removed with a note that said "personal garbage". Or another example: I had a box from something (also when I first moved in, can't quite remember what), so I flattened it and put in the recycling can in the kitchen, which also received a "personal recycling" note. I then determined that everything that is not food related must be personal garbage or recycling, so I've been doing pretty well on not getting any food notes.

Well, the other day was a very noteful day, apparently. I was feeling lazy one day as I finished up the peanut butter in the broken container that Laura had left behind, so guiltily, I threw it in the garbage instead of the recycling. I was so conscious of my wrong decision that I intentionally put it in the bottom of the can so that I wouldn't get a note. But hear out my logic, okay? We aren't allowed to use dish cloths or sponges or hand towels and have to use paper towels to wash and dry dishes and our hands, and I just didn't feel like scrubbing peanut butter out of a broken container with a paper towel. Please do not judge me; I swear I try really hard to live sustainably, but it's easier said than done sometimes. (How cliché!)

Apparently, a peanut butter coated container cannot hide at the bottom of the can. I received a note, "Please wash and put in recycling." Dammit. Laziness never wins when your trash is constantly inspected. So I brought the container to my room until I got up the motivation to grease up some paper towels, which further ebbs on the whole sustainability thing: I waste so many paper towels on dishes and keeping the kitchen clean. Anyways, that's not my point here.

Fine. My every action is monitored; my trash is searched; fine.

Laura visited me for a week, and as I walked through the living room one day, I noticed a note on the chair that Laura had sat in as we watched The Big Bang Theory the night before: "Please smooth out the blanket when you are done sitting."

I swiped up the paper and went to Laura, "You got a note!" I laughed. Laura smoothed out the blanket covering the living room furniture, and the room once again looked as if no one had ever entered it. Ever.

It's such a strange way to live. I sneak around in my own living space! When I come home, I shut the gate as quietly as possible and tiptoe up the deck stairs so that the Yorkie puppy will not come yapping loudly at the sliding glass door. I love puppies; I do. Just not yappy ones, and she's always behind the glass anyways because I go in through a different door, so I experience none of the cuteness of the little dog, except for gawking at how small she is. And just because she is behind the glass does not make her yapping any less piercing.

So I sneak around. I tiptoe. I look both ways before exiting my bedroom. I shut off all lights and signs of existence and wipe every counter twice and wash my dishes before I even eat my food and put my kettle back in the cupboard when it's still hot. I sneak up the stairs to grab my mail. I carry my shoes to the door. I take my shoes off when I'm still outside, even if it means getting my socks wet. I've become obsessive about cleaning up after myself in fear of "the note".

And then there was this morning. The rest of my housemates aren't bums, so they get up and go to school or work or whatever it is they do while I mosey around. I had an interview this afternoon, so I decided it would be a shower day and that I would take some time to get ready and look nice. The bathroom is divided into two sections. One part has the sink, the garbage can, and the counter. The other part has the toilet and the shower. I got out of the shower, wrapped in my towel, and opened the door to the other half of the bathroom to walk to my room.

My landlord was standing right outside the door. Right outside the door. Used to never seeing any sign of her existence save for the notes, her presence was the last thing I expected as I exited the shower. I jumped back, "Oh my gosh!" dropping the nightgown that I was holding, but thankfully, holding onto my towel.

"Just emptying the trash. Sorry to frighten you," she laughed.

Shaking, I walked to my room. I looked at myself in the mirror and took a deep breath. Patience. Patience.

And God knows I'm trying to be patient. It's not easy trying to pretend like you aren't alive. It's even more frightening because I don't have cell phone service in my room, so contact to the outside world is limited. AH! I might just be going stir crazy. I mean, who complains that something is too clean?! And at least all of the notes are polite; they say "Please".

So here I am: in my room, leaned over at my computer typing away into cyberspace. It's evening now, so there is no light coming into the apartment. Being in the basement, there usually isn't much light anyways, but it's now especially dark and cold.

I remember being afraid of the basement when I was a kid. Heck, I'm still afraid of the basement at my parent's house in Pennsylvania, especially at night. I'm trying not to be afraid of the basement here because, well, it's my home: it's where I pretend not to live, which is a funny thought because during summer days off from the school year, Derek, Katlin, and I used to play "house" in the basement sometimes, pretending to live like adults. Regardless, I never thought I'd say it, but I miss my big blue house in the woods with skylights and a woodburner. I miss the smell of the woodburner, even the smoke that would sometimes back up through the vents.

I cooked a vegetable patty the other day. I had the oven fan on high, as required. When I was done, I turned the fan off, washed my dishes, and retreated to my room to eat. When I took my empty plate back to the kitchen, there was a note on the fan, "Please leave the fan on for ten minutes after cooking too!" I miss the smell of fresh cooked food in the kitchen.

I miss being able to walk around in anything and nothing. I miss sitting my dishes on the counter or in the sink to be attended to later. I miss throwing my coat on a chair when I walk in the door. I miss hanging my towel in the bathroom. I miss hand towels and dish cloths. I miss being in a home that feels lived in. And I miss having friendly faces to greet in the morning or at the end of the day. That's right. I may never admit it again, but I am homesick. And Mom, I hope that you miss my coat in the kitchen and my junk on the steps and my shoes at the door and my dishes in the sink because I sure took it for granted.

But shhh, it's a secret.

I will learn to love the rain.

I decided that I need to be less pessimistic about the not-so-favorable weather. A new mantra was in order:

I will learn to love the rain.

People tried to encourage me when I moved to Seattle. I heard it all: "It rains almost constantly for six months straight, but it's only a light drizzle." "It doesn't actually downpour; it's more of a mist." "Real Seattleites don't use umbrellas, just raincoats." "You get used to the wet a few months in." "At least the sun comes out a little everyday." "At least it doesn't actually get cold, per se."

I'm not really sure which of those comments are encouragements, but I decided to accept them as fact and try to be as Seattlelite-ish as possible. Looking at the weather report for the week, there was at least an 80% chance of rain everyday. Here we go.

I try to go out for a long walk everyday. I'm not quite brave enough to run in the rain, so my entire running routine is shot, which is really disappointing, more so towards myself than the weather. Excuses! But I've got my walks. I have yet to invest in a raincoat, and I hate getting raindrops on my glasses and dripping off my hair, so I have also not succumbed to the "Real Seattleites don't use umbrellas..." My umbrella is small. Really small. It keeps half of me dry as I walk: whose idea was it to put the handle in the middle of the umbrella? Sure, it looks nice, all symmetrical and what not, but it's not very practical, not that I have any better ideas. I contemplate all of this as I step into a puddle that looks shallower than it turns out to be. Water soaks through my sneakers and seeps up my socks.

I will learn to love the rain.

My long walk for Saturday was a trip to Ballard. On a map, it didn't look too far. You know, just down the hill and across the canal and a few blocks up to Goodwill and then back down to Market Street, I figured, to see what is good on the main strip. As I stepped outside, the sun was out. Puffy cumulous clouds scattered the sky, but a grey curtain loomed in the East. Not willing to take chances, I grabbed my umbrella. What was the weather forecast talking about? This is great! I made my way across the seemingly endless Ballard Bridge and ventured into the neighborhood.

I dropped off a bag of clothes at Goodwill and looked around a bit. Content in my findings, two solid trunks that I would have to come back for another day in my car, I decided to make my way to Market Street. I passed a tent of puppies that were up for adoption. I looked in each of the cages at the sad eyes staring back and wished that I could take them all home.

"We've got about a half an hour until the rain hits," a man said to the woman in charge of the tent. The thought briefly crossed my mind that maybe I should start for home. I had a long uphill walk ahead of me. It's just rain! I've got my umbrella anyways.

I will learn to love the rain.

I kept walking. Cupcake Royale. Yet another Starbucks. I wasn't too impressed thus far. However, after downing an extra large mug of tea on my walk down, I decided to take a quick stop in Starbucks, only to find that you had to have a passcode for the bathroom. Well, I refuse to purchase a cup of coffee to release a previous cup of tea. It just seems counterproductive. I can wait. I'll head home soon.

I walked down a few more blocks. I stopped in a few second-hand shops, hoping to find a pair of boots for rain walking. No luck. Finally, I was feeling tired. The air had cooled, and I felt it ache in my feet. I decided to go home. And the rain started in a light drizzle.

I will learn to love the rain.

I opened my umbrella and walked back in the direction of the bridge. The rain came down harder. Maybe I can take a bus... I checked the OneBusAway app on my phone. Apparently, the bus from Ballard to Queen Anne only runs Monday through Friday in the mornings. Well, it was none of those times. Guess I'm walking.

I felt a bit resentful towards the bus stops that I walked by--none of them were going in my direction. Maybe I could take a bus to the U District and then go to Queen Anne from there. Or I could take the new D-line to downtown and then go from there! Everything was out-of-the-way, and the tea was urging that I take the shortest route home. I opened the Maps app--why do I so rely on my smartphone?--which showed that I was still three walking miles from home. Was it really that far? I wasn't even to the bridge yet! Three miles seems so long when walking in the rain when you have to pee.

I made it to the bridge, and instantly, the wind picked up. Why was I not thinking that the bridge would obviously leave me more exposed? The wind pulled my umbrella, and it pulled me along like a kite. Finally, it got so strong that I couldn't even hold the umbrella half-open, and I had to collapse it and face the wind and rain unarmed. Now I see why Seattleites don't use umbrellas. I wish I was exaggerating when I say that the wind was so strong that I had to hold my elbow across my forehead and walk with my eyes shut as the water pelted at my skin in sharp ticks. Tears escaped the far corners of my eyes, even though they were closed, and I kept walking. I just have to make it across the bridge where the wind won't be so bad.

This was more than a drizzle. I'm not used to being caught in bad weather. In fact, I typically avoid it at all costs. My mantra was failing me. My entire frontside was soaked from the windblown rain. Did I mention how endless the Ballard Bridge felt when I walked across it earlier? It felt three times as long in the poor weather.

I. Will. Love! The. Rain!

Every once in a while I opened my eyes to assess my progress. I felt so foolish walking with my eyes closed across a bridge with water on one side and traffic on the other. At least there were cement barriers forming a walkway on either side--pretty safe, I'd say. As I peeled apart my eyelids and looked down, I noticed my untied shoelace. You've got to be kidding me! I'm not stopping now! I imagined how silly I must have looked to all of the smart people whirring by in their cars.

And just like that, I made it across the bridge. The wind stilled. The rain stopped. I looked up, and there was no evidence above me that a storm had even passed through. The sun peaked from behind one of the fluffy cumulous clouds that mirrored the ones from earlier. WHAT IS THIS PLACE?!

I assessed the damage through spotted lenses: my pants were soaked, hell, everything was soaked. And my shoe was still untied, of course. Okay. At least I know what I'm working with. I started up the hill.

I will learn to love the rain.

When I got to the top of the hill, I looked between houses to see the bridge and the canal below. I don't know what I was thinking in walking to Ballard. When I had told one of my housemates that walking to Ballard was my plan for the day, she seemed shocked. Seeing the distance covered, I understood why.

Well, if I pee my pants, I think my jeans are wet enough that no one could tell the difference. Plus, I'd be warm. No, that's no excuse. I'm almost home anyways. Though, I have to admit--why I have to, I'm not sure, but it seems funny as an afterthought--I passed a yard which had a sign reading, "Children's play area. No Poop. No Pee." and I was really tempted to piss there just in spite of the sign. I was forced to remind myself that I am a lady!

I counted down the blocks to home, naming which street came next in efforts to memorize the maze of my neighborhood. It's not a sensible pattern, so I missed a few streets, which entirely killed any patience I had left, which was practically none. I'm so good at this optimism thing! (Cue my mother saying that I have my father's short temper...)

Finally, I made it to the gate, went in, kicked off my shoes, unlocked the door, half-limped--trying to keep my socks on and trying not to step on the soaked bottom seams of my pant legs--down the stairs, dropped my umbrella, jacket, and backpack on the floor and ran to the bathroom where I stripped down.

Relieved and entirely exhausted, I returned to my room and collapsed on my bed half-naked. I will never move again. I looked at my thighs which burned a cold red. All I want is a bath... So I went and sat down in a hot shower. Close enough. I let the water run over every part of me, until the red skin turned pale and then red again in warmth. I emerged and bundled up in the comfiest clothes that were clean in the drawers. I want to stay warm forever! I sat in the chair in my bedroom huddled up to a cup of tea and wondered what warm weather felt like. I tried to remember Arizona just a few short weeks ago--has it been weeks already?--but the sense of the heat evaded me. I looked out my window and saw that the sky had greyed again.

I will learn to love the rain.

Permanent

I need a change.

I looked in the mirror and contemplated my reflection from every angle. 

After having just settled in to a city across the country, only to drop out of the school that I moved there for, then taking several short trips to other cities, then coming back, you'd think that I've had enough change, at least for a few months. Apparently not. 

I watched the long strands of hair give in to waves along my ears. 

"I want to perm my hair," I said to Laura as I walked into my room.

"Then do it."

"Really?"

"Why not?"

"I don't know."

So I did.

Here's a photo venture:

BeforeDuring  After

I had to post the "during" photo because 1) it's funny and 2) looking at my hair all up in curlers reminds me of my grandma. My grandma always used to put my hair in pink and purple foam curlers. I would sit down on the blue shag toilet seat cover (or was it pink?) in her bathroom as she did my hair and put bright red lipstick on my tiny lips. "Curlers in your hair; shame on you!" she would chime. 

And after she died, the curlers sat under the sink in my mom's bathroom, and from time to time, we would get them out, and my mom would say the same thing, "Curlers in your hair..." I remember sleeping in them a few times. I must have been in kindergarten, judging from my school pictures. And I got my hair cut short to boyish length in the third grade and have generally kept it quite short ever since, which also means that it's been since elementary school when I last had my hair in a perm. Oh the funny things that we do to ourselves.

But I like the change. It's nice to have things like curling our hair: change that we can control--how big of curls do you want? wave or spiral? 

Here's my usual 'do now. I feel spunky!

Blackberry Rain

It's the rainy season. We have entered the season that I have most feared about the Pacific Northwest. Every time that I step outside, my eyes peruse a 180 across the dome: no sun today. We are only a few days in.

My friend, Laura, has been visiting for the past week, and I've been showing her around town and the many "must-see" sights of the area.

"I would be disappointed if I came to Seattle and it didn't rain," she told me. I sighed.

We saw the sights anyways. We walked the loop around Discovery Park. We even took a side path with a sign that said "beach access" which lead us to a lighthouse and a fantastic shore along Puget Sound. We found a driftwood log propped perpendicular to another: the perfect beach see-saw. On either side of the log, we took turns pushing off--squat, straight, squat, straight. The angle was short, so we went quickly. Updownupdown. We laughed. Both of us laughed at how silly we must have looked. Both of us laughed at how great and rare these moments are when we feel like children, even though we're officially out of childhood.

Other hikers walked passed us. They pointed and laughed, and we laughed back. It didn't matter that we looked ridiculous. It didn't matter that there was a light drizzle mixed with salty spray from the waterline. It didn't matter that the sun hid behind clouds, save for a small section reflected off the water.

On the walk back, we had a plan. We had passed huge blackberry bushes on the way in. Then, we had paused to snack, but now, we were going to take them with us. Laura folded the maps of the park that we had picked up at the beginning of the trail into origami boxes. We filled them so full of berries that we back them up with the giant sycamore leaves that scattered the path.

The berries were cold. I'm learning that a lot out here--everything is cold but only in a way that makes it all seem so fresh. The berries quickly seeped through the paper and the leaves, dripping down our fingers in a purple stain.

"I love getting berry seeds stuck in my teeth." Laura commented. I laughed, and she replied, "No, I'm serious; I really like it." We picked away at all of the berries within reach.

And we oo-ed and aw-ed at the ones that we couldn't. Bundles of bulging berries hung out of reach. I stood, imagining myself grabbing them, imagining the juice pop in my mouth. But I could never really pick them.

"Look at these!" Laura found even bigger black berries close to the ground. I made some joke about her short-people advantage and joined in, scavenging whichever berries she hadn't gotten yet.

When we got back to my apartment, we changed in to dry clothes and blended the blackberries into two tall smoothies. Sitting side-by-side, crunching down blackberry seeds, we reflected on the joy of being able to pick fresh berries and bring them home to eat.

I gulped down the sweet purple and wondered why I had my hopes set for the high berries in the first place--the others taste just as well. And, though the sun made an appearance for a whopping twenty seconds between the trees, it's still raining.

Amphibious

The air was cold when I awoke in the tent. It was small--a two-person, it claimed, provided that those people were both not much over five feet tall. I stretched my legs straight; my head and toes opposed the tent walls. Dew rolled down the canvas and onto my forehead. I pulled open my sleeping bag and unzipped the tent. The full rush of morning air hit me at once. I breathed in the mountains, the tallest trees I had ever seen, the ash of last night's campfires. 

Laura awoke soon after. She joined me several yards away from our tent and over a small hill where grass turned to sand and rock as the Smith river gave quiet gurgles against the shore. 

"This is it," I said. "We've been talking about it this whole trip, and this is it. No one is awake yet. I am going skinny dipping." 

"You've been saying you wanted to, not me." She glanced around, confirming that the woods were the only witness to our words.

I started comically. I removed the first two long-sleeved shirts that I had worn to bed. Then t-shirt. Then t-shirt. Then t-shirt. The layers peeled away until I was standing bare. I looked around again. At this point, it didn't really matter. I stumbled over the final rocks until my toes touched the edge of the water. The previous night, those same rocks had been leaping with jelly-bean frog-lings. Now they were still. 

I stepped in and felt the instant rush. My intake of breath felt void of air: sharp, empty. It felt good. I stepped in further. I continued in to my waist. I looked back at Laura sitting on a stone near the top of the hill. I faced the water ahead. A quick inhale pulled me forward; I reached, arms first, and let the water touch each fragment of me individually. Seconds passed slowly, and the cold seeped in upon impact. I wanted to stay in the soluble blanket of mountain spring.

A quicker, sharper breath re-introduced air as I leapt my torso towards blue. I looked around, and the world was clean. I was clean. I leaned back into a float. The water gently tickled the sensitive skin that was nearly always covered. Breath warmed my lungs--outside in. Eyes closed, open. Breath in, out. There was nothing more than these patterns. 

A few minutes later, I stood. I stepped from stone to softened river stone towards shore. I wrung out my hair and shook my limbs. My towel was locked in the car. I dressed with what I had: pants, t-shirt, fleece. I sat on a rock next to Laura, my breath still in short spurts. The breeze pricked bumps into my skin, which felt like burning as the remaining water rolled down. Morning birds solicited their call-and-response across the water. Eyes closed, I felt it; I felt the rock beneath me; I felt the motion of the water; I felt the sounds of the surrounding wildlife. 

A few hours later, I thawed after melting my companions in the car on the way to a hiking trail. 

"You're the dumb one who jumped in the river early in the morning," they told me, begging to turn the heat down.

I couldn't deny it. True, the sun hadn't even cleared the hills. True, the fog had barely settled above the treetops. True.

But I needed it. 

PaperMe

In elementary school, I did a project on buttes and plateaus--what the differences are between them, what they look like. My dad and I worked in our basement on a model, old coffee cans used to base the paper-mache models. We added layer after layer. My dad has an eye for detail. As the model dried, it was time to paint. We started with a brown base, then added varying shades of tan and grey.

"You need a river going down between the canyons," Dad pointed. So I painted a blue line trailing along the apparant canyon.

I thought of this while on the road this week. As we drove across Arizona from Phoenix to at least the California border, I watched the mountains, the canyons, the buttes, the plateaus. I was reminded of why I loved this land in the first place, how even in second or third grade I was drawn to study the place that I called my second-home, even if I was only there two weeks out of the year. The landscape colored me, coupled by the comfort of family, Arizona called me.

I thought I needed to be there. I often still do.

A few years after the paper-mache landscape, in art class, we created life-sized figure drawings of ourselves. We were then told to mail them to other people and have those people take a picture with "paper me" and mail back the drawing and the photo to  be displayed at the upcoming art show. I remember sending PaperMe to my Aunt Necie, who took a picture making snow angels with paper me in her yard.

Then, I sent PaperMe West to Aunt Sharon and Uncle Tom, who took a picture of the three of us--paper me stuck to a large saguaro in front of their house, aunt and uncle on either side. But the mailing to Arizona took nearly a week then, and PaperMe didn't make it back.

My art teacher had me quickly draw up another one to display with my photos. I scurried crayons and colored pencils into crooked lines that couldn't nearly match the hard work of the original--the real one, in which I had put so much of myself, as artists do. The re-make was simply a shell, a fill-in-the-blank replica. This wasn't PaperMe at all.

She was still in Ariziona, and maybe she still is.

When I first arrived in Mesa on Saturday, the hot air hit me all at once, and I smelt the instant warm of desert, of childhood summers, of a sunlit, familiar sense of home. I hadn't flown into Mesa before, and as we left the plane, we walked right onto the tarmac. I found my way to the door, and soon enough, my cousin Sunny purred around the bend on his motorcycle. I hopped on (yes, Mom, I wore a helmet), and we smoothly navigated highway through desert.

The sun seaped into my desperate skin, and I closed my eyes and leaned back against the seat. The hairs on my arms danced in waves. My breath was slow, concentrated. I smiled uncontrollably, taking in every second of the limited days of my visit, and I thought, maybe this is enough.