Hopeful February :: Today was one of those hopeful Seattle
Winter days. They usually come in February as
the days start to get noticeably longer and suddenly you’re no longer waking up
in the dark and leaving work in the dark and basically living your whole life in the dark.

The sun was out all day today. It was almost 60 degrees. I took a
lunch break for once in my life and walked outside for 45 minutes. When I got home I
could see the pretty pink sky out my window.

Real Seattleites don’t find these days hopeful. They find
them depressing while they talk about the Summer drought that lies ahead
since this region is so dependent on the snow run off from the mountains. While these effects of global warming may not be so hopeful, I still find days like today hopeful – atleast on an emotional
level.

I spent the weekend in LA, again.

This time saying goodbye to my uncle, my favorite uncle. He
couldn’t talk, but he wanted us to talk to him and to tell him stories -stories of why
he’s our favorite. So I told him all the things I could remember and more
things that my siblings and cousins remembered. And let me tell you there are so
many things: Like crazy Christmas gifts only uncles can give – one
year it was over-sized slippers that looked like chicken feet. Or how he called us “brain
dead” our entire teen-hood(I think he was kinda right with that one, teenagers are a little brain dead).
There was also the time he took us on our first backpacking trip and another
time he hosted a water balloon Olympics for us in his backyard. He LOVED being
an uncle. And these stories only scratch the surface of all the Uncle Mike stories
we have.

For awhile now, I think I’ve been so frustrated trying to
figure out life. I want to do something meaningful, but I don’t what that is. It’s
funny, I become less and less interested in everything and more exhausted the
longer I spend trying to figure out what’s meaningful and thinking about all
the things that I could do or might like or maybe would just be good at. It’s
kind of terrifying, but mostly just frustrating.  I don’t get it. I don’t get life. Not one bit. Okay, maybe
I get a few small bits.

My uncle really got a few big bits of
life. He knew that there were some pretty fun and wonderful things about it. I think that’s part of why he
clung to his for so long. So much longer than most people would have in his
circumstances.

He hasn’t walked in well over ten years and before that his
mobility was slowly deteriorating in all kinds of ways. So, obviously he was well
acquainted with what was not so great about life. But he kept laughing with us
and he kept visiting us and giving us chicken feet slippers and he came to our soccer games and gymnastics meets
and he shared and gave all kinds of other good bits of life not just with me but with all 18 of his
nieces and nephews.

And all those things and little bits are so meaningful and so
special.

I guess those are the bits of life that I do actually understand
– those are the kinds of things that I am interested in and that are meaningful
to me. And that’s saying a lot – since I haven’t really been able to figure out
much.

And that, we will call Hopeful.

Closet Doors :: The picture has nothing to do with what I’m going to write about. It’s from my trip to Catalina Island a couple weekends ago. I went for my mom’s 60th birthday. The locals said it was the off-season. Personally, to me, it felt like the on-season. It was so nice.

Anyways… On this Monday night, while you’ve been making your dinner and cleaning your kitchen, and tucking your children in or whatever it is that you’ve been doing, I have been to yoga — breathing, channeling and opening my kind, compassionate, caring self. I have also been putting into practice my strong, independent woman self at The Home Depot.

I own my place, which is great because I can do whatever I want to it. So, when my sliding closet doors started bugging me(so annoying how you can only get to one side of the closet at a time – it’s like the whole middle of the closet goes to waste) my strong, independent woman self ripped them off(I might have had to call my dad twice during that process). And then, of course, when I went to The Home Depot for the first time(can I tell you how much I am enjoying using “the” in front of Home Depot right now?!) I found out that my closet is not a standard size, which meant custom size doors needed to be ordered — ch-ching$$$. That was a month ago. The custom doors finally arrived and so I marched myself into The Home Depot to pick them up tonight.

The cart they were on had a bad wheel, but I managed to wheel them out to my car without hitting any humans or bumping into anything – though there were several close calls. And, I could not control my laugh out loud at myself laughter trying to make that cart go in a straight line. Once in the parking lot, I heaved the twice my size doors off the cart and somehow managed to stuff them into my tiny car. As I was giving them the final shove into my car, a guy walking by stops to ask if I’ve got it. My triumphant response, “Uh, YEAH, I do!" 

The journey of getting the doors from the car, to the elevator, to the third floor in my building and into my place was a little less than glorious and far from graceful, but I did it. The doors now happily lie in my entry way where they will likely be for the rest of the week until this weekend when I will paint and install them. I might do this all by my strong independent woman self… OR I might call brother for help. We’ll see.

And now, I am off to the bar for a gin and tonic with my neighbor friend.

Happy Monday.