smooth move

My life as a catering employee continues with last night's party for Children's Hospital in a tall building in North downtown. I was wandering around as usual swooping in for dirty dishes and passing appetizers to people who felt uncomfortable taking food from a live person. About 300 people had showed up to drink and dine and celebrate the Hospital's 100th anniversary. Quiet filled the room and a short program began as we all gathered, ready to pass champagne for the big toast. I grabbed a tray with about 12 glasses on it and moved through the crowd, people no longer shy to take something from a live person. I returned to the galley to refill my tray and reach a few more people before the toasts were over.

I left the passageway from the kitchen as people raised their glasses for a second toast, this time for the newly introduced Mayor. I was moving fast when a large, sports coat clad back began to move towards me. I slowed and recoiled and sucked in air when I realized that the glasses were going down. In slow motion, my wrist fighting the crossfire of inertia, the first three glasses tipped forwards, all over the sports coat. Three of them fell off the tray while four others spilled onto me and made their way off my little round tray as well. CRASH! POP! SMASH! 7 of my 10 flutes blew into shards and mocked me as their pieces all floated in mid air before resting in a 12 foot radius.

The quiet of the room changed into a giant gasp that made my hair flutter and my tie shift. 'Ooh'...died out into an eerie silence while 600 eyes shifted to me. Maintaining my ever-fluid motions I whispered 'I'm sorry' as I moved from the curled recovery position into a spin back into the kitchen. I fled. I set down my tray and went to look for the dustpan, soaked in alcohol. The stunned silence of the room slowly melted away as the speaker cracked a joke and continued with their toasting. My colleagues swooped in and swept up and the party went on. Later a work friend told me that while I looked for the broom, the man came to the back for a towel, removed his jacket and revealed a 9mm gun strapped to his torso.

Nice one.

snow falling on subarus

This post-Thanksgiving weekend I traveled to Bellingham to attend a cousin's wedding and visit my Grandpa. It snowed a lot. Stephen and I went out into the woods to throw snowballs and clip cedar branches for a wreath and came back quite wet and cold.

Luckily the wedding reception was before the 1 foot dump of snow, so we made it. I think my well wishes for my cousin was maybe the third time I have spoken to him, ever. With 37 biological cousins, you can't be super close to all of them, regrettably.

Even though I hoped that we would get stuck in Bellingham, we didn't and I had to leave all of that lovely snow behind. Now it's snowing and raining, hailing and freezing in Seattle all at the same time. It's also totally dark at 5:12pm.

My spirits, however are very high. I have a new car! After a painfully long wait of 1.5 months, my little Subaru wagon is rebuilt and running strong. I picked her up today and we went to pass our emissions test and get some tabs. Then I took her right over to REI to hang out with the other wagons while I picked up a few gifts. I am pleased to have spent well less than half the money that I made from my Volkswagen, which means I can pay the bills a little longer in case this job hunt doesn't work out. I'm so excited to begin our new life together. 2006 Major Life Change #215, complete.

Mmmmmm

Thanksgiving was a success. I wasn't entirely sure it would be because this was the first time my family spent the holiday without dozens of aunts, uncles and cousins. This meant that the cooking was all up to us. I bossily picked out all the recipes, making me feel even more responsible for the quality of dinner.

It all turned out great. Everything was wildly delicious and we were all pleased. It tasted even better after around 4 hours on our feet in the kitchen and the knowledge that it was a fresh, preservative-free, all-natural meal. I couldn't believe how much work it was without the benefit of potluck distribution. Even as we sat down and looked at our turkey all ready to go, I thought about the next steps of making stock with the carcass and what I could do with the leftovers. I enjoyed all the work. It gave me a real sense of purpose for the day.

The company was great too. Just five of us, and we had fun. After I cut myself twice, burned myself once, closed the car door on my shoulder and dropped a just-filled salt shaker, I enjoyed the generous sympathy that only family is willing to give.

By 10:30pm, I finally got around to thinking about what I was thankful for. There were all the standard, yet no less important things like food, shelter, friends, health, adventure, nature and God's love. Beyond a healthy admiration for the world's design and the place of human beings in it, I thought of three personal things for this year.

1. I feel thankful for the freedom and fulfilment I had with my trip. It was all I really wanted to do, and I did it. It feels great.
2. Seattle and the Northwest. I am so excited to be living here again and renewing my vows with the region. I love the mountains, the water and the people here. Especially all of my people and my history.
3. I am thankful for feeling good about where I am in life. I am older, wiser and know what I want, more than ever. You may look at my lack of job, permanent housing, car or boyfriend and suggest otherwise, but you would be wrong.

Today's photo is of a church in Greece on the Island of Naxos. It was Easter time. Dreamy sunset!

happy birthday mark!

Birthday number two this week goes to Mark, my older brother. He has always been a great friend to me and I want to celebrate him today. Well, he's been a great friend recently. Now that I think about it, for the first half of our lives, he was pretty terrible to me. I know it takes two to tango, but we used to fight like cats and dogs and I have to hold him responsible for taking advantage of a younger sister with a short temper. We would fight over toys, games or for no reason at all. Every day our play would culminate into a chasing fiasco followed by a tangled wrestling match. I would scream for mercy, and that would be it. My mother mostly ignored us unless blood was drawn.

There were good times playing grocery store, engineer or dairy farmer before we started school. After years of fighting, one day when I started high school, we suddenly became friends. That was it, the fighting ended and we spent the next 7 years as good buddies. He would let me hang around his college roommates and I would download songs off of Napster and burn CDs for him.

Now he is happily married and provides comic relief and emotional support to the whole family. If it wasn't for Mark, we would all be more emotionally reclusive and too serious. He lightens up the mood and brings a fine dose of laughter and smiles to any situation. He loves to bike and works on making green energy a reality for all of us here in Seattle. He's a great guy and I'm so glad to have such a nice brother. Well, at least he turned out to be a nice brother. Happy Birthday Mark!

distractions

There are many distractions in a life where self-motivation is the only motivation to accomplish anything. Lately, I have struggled the most with:

1. Massaging recliners with views of Mt Rainier.








2. Library books with titles like : Love in Idleness

3. Yoga videos here at the house with weirdo instructors














Melissa was here this past Friday. You remember Melissa, don't you? She came over for an interview and we had a day to catch up a little, scour the goodwill outlet and commiserate on the end of the trip. Claire and I also tried to make the house as appealing as possible so that she will come back and move in one day.














Here's the trip photo for today. Thailand is a nice place. Don't you want to take a swim?

happy birthday mom!

Today is my mother's birthday. She's a really nice mom. She's also a really nice wife. And a nice sister. Pretty great aunt and daughter too. I'm going to guess she's a good cousin and niece. I don't know anyone who doesn't like her. Pretty soon she'll be the perfect grandma. I am not sure how she can do all those things so well.

Ann is smart and creative. She's a great photographer and writer. She makes great cinnamon rolls and cookies. She enjoys adventure and the steady life. She is so capable and efficient, but never overbearing. You should meet her, you'll like her too. Probably not as much as I do though because I think she's the greatest. Happy Birthday mom! I hope you like the chocolate cake I made you. I love you!

housewifery

Did I mention lately that I am living the dream? THE dream. I am a stay-at-home, work-from-home housewife with no husband, children or mortgage. I chit chat with neighbors, take brisk afternoon walks or jogs and am immersed in craft projects and Christmas gift creation. I think a lot about what to fix for dinner. It's really nice to be able to "rush" through a novel, 3 hours a day for 4 days in a row so that I can return it on time to the library.

I do try and get up early. I work on my writing daily. I work on my portfolio for job applications. My social calendar is filling out. Claire and I have people over.

All defenses aside, I love my life right now. It's a lot of fun. If only these days could go on forever. Maybe I could marry well...

I don't have any photos of me at home being lazy or productive. I will instead share a trip photo. Maybe I will post one here and there to help us all remember the glory days before the glory days. These are Kenyan kids in the village I stayed in Way Out There.

run heidi

-“When I got tired, I slept. When I got hungry, I ate. When I had to go, you know, I went.”
-“And so, you just ran?”
-“Yeah.”

Now you would probably believe me if I told you, but my sister can run like the wind blows. She ran 26.2 miles through the streets of New York last Sunday. She woke up at 4:30 and I took her picture before she went to Staten Island to await the start of the race in a freezing cold field. I took the morning to walk out on the Brooklyn Bridge and marvel at its beauty and then began to subway it around the city in hopes of catching Heidi and cheering her on. I never did see her for my hours of neck craning and tiptoes, but I saw her in spirit. There are so many people running, you would have to arrange meeting points along the way. The race is really about running though, and not hanging out with spectators.

She finished the race in good time, she barely walked and got a cool medal. The grumpy new yorkers would light up when they saw her wearing it for the rest of the day. People offered her cuts in line, seats and congratulations at every turn. I’m so proud of her for running. She said it was the most painful, difficult thing she’s ever done. Lance Armstrong said the same thing after he finished the race.

Our pre and post race time in the city was a blast. We stayed with my great friend Liz, an International Affairs graduate student at Columbia. We went all out each day, packing in almost every neighborhood in Manhattan, the Empire State Building, museums, Rockefeller Center, specialty stores, parks and probably around 30 subway trips.

My favorite things were Central Park, Paley Park, the Brooklyn Bridge and Francesco’s Pizzeria. The weather was clear and chilly, with fall color and blue skies. I was thoroughly exhausted on the way home, we had been so busy. Seeing Liz was just like the old times before I left for my trip in January. I liked New York in a lot of ways. It was so great to see the buildings, the bustling and the old feel of an East Coast city. In the end, it was too crowded for me. At home, I like to shop at 11pm so that I have the grocery to myself. Being in Manhattan is a constant effort to weave through crowds, wait in lines, find places to sit and stay out of everyone’s way. Seattle seems so peaceful in comparison and I relax just thinking about it.