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.

Tapestry :: We are so quickly creeping right through January, but I’d like to take a moment and reflect on 2014. I know I’m a little tardy for this kind of reflection, but it’s okay. I’m tardy for all kinds of things – my Christmas tree is still up! Shall we talk about the highlights or maybe the lowlights or maybe the meaningful?

At yoga the other week – the very first class of 2015 –  we did an interesting thing. Yoga is always, always and always about being present. To use some yoga lingo, it’s about connecting to the now, paying attention to your breath, the moment, and letting yourself just be.

And so, I was a bit shocked while laying on my yoga mat at the beginning of class to hear the instructor ask us to reflect on the past year and try and remember some of the good, fun, joyful moments.  And then she made an interesting analogy: The Tapestry Of Our Lives.  She described life as a tapestry that is made up of all our life experiences and sometimes things or relationships happen and maybe they don’t make sense at the time or they hurt a lot or seem like the wrong color thread for our tapestry, but as life happens and the tapestry continues to be woven – the colors work themselves out and things make sense.  And even that hot pink streak fits or the dark brown section has its place.

I liked the analogy.

Here’s a list of things that happened this year. Things that should be remembered and things that added all kinds of colors to my tapestry.

Saying goodbye to grandma

Outdoor dinner parties

Rockclimbing in Mexico

Brother moved to Seattle

Therapy

I painted the ceiling in my room and found an awesome door to hang on the wall in my living room.

Flipping off that favorite dock of mine on Lake Washington with Mitch and our noodles

All 4 siblings visiting Seattle

Watching my mom put her mom into the ground in Iowa

Camping on Lopez Island with Grasela and the girls

Two visits to Austin

Philip

The list could go on and on really, so much happens in a year – (ya know, I was a pineapple for Halloween and spent time in New York and Montana and all sorts of  fun people visited me in Seattle and I wore a jumpsuit). But, the above is what surfaced most quickly when I thought through both the good and meaningful moments from the past year.

It’s a good list.

The Swedish Cultural Center :: I really really thought about naming this post “The Jumpsuit”, and then, I don’t know Swedish Cultural Center somehow won.

Anyways…

I wore a jumpsuit to a New Year’s Eve party at the Swedish Cultural Center. It was the second time the jumpsuit had been worn. The first time I wore it was for my work Christmas party. I had bought the jumpsuit months beforehand, but hadn’t had the guts to wear it. However, I needed(errr wanted) something sassy for the work Christmas party and well, already purchased and sitting sad and neglected in my closet was the jumpsuit. It took all my guts to put that thing on and march into a party of 150 of my closest colleagues, but I did it – and it was glorious.

By and large, atleast in my experience, New Year’s Eve is a holiday that gets hyped up a bit too much only to result in a lackluster reality(except for one time in high school when I planned a huge all nighter for the entire church youth group and another time a few years ago when 4 of my best friends and I danced our brains out at a Bollywood New Year’s Shabang). But, those two times were definitely exceptions.

Anyways, despite my knowledge that New Year’s Eve is maybe better spent lying in a bubble bath(which is how I spent it last year) there is still a weird pressure every year to do something cool – or atleast TO DO SOMETHING. So, when a friend suggested a party at The Swedish Cultural Center where her friend was playing in the main attraction – an ABBA cover band – I said yes. I mean, what could be cooler than a party at the Swedish Cultural Center?

Well friends, despite any doubts that you may have about the quality of fun available at such a place as the Swedish Cultural Center, you should know that as my New Year’s luck would have it – the Swedish Cultural Center DELIVERED.

We danced the entire time to ABBA. Danced and danced. And even sang. There were people old and young. We made friends. Someone, amdist the dancing crowd, gave me the best compliment(and this is really an exact quote), “Oh my god, I love your jumpsuit! It is SO good.” We ate Swedish Pancakes with whipped cream and lingon berries.  Bog drove me home and amidst the usually annoying 1AM New Year’s traffic(that she wasn’t at all phased by) we talked and talked about the things that are important to our little souls. We got home safely. And I woke up on January 1, 2015 with only a little more than a mild headache from my two gin and tonics. I used to think with some practice perhaps my alcohol tolerance would improve, but I think it will forever be comparable to that of a goldfish.

Happy 2015 People.

Secret Santa :: Upon arriving to work the other week I was greeted with a teeny tiny mini snow globe at my desk from my Secret Santa – it was magical. I’ve decided Secret Santa is one of my most favorite games ever.

Sex and the City :: Upon re-hashing the details of my most recent date, a friend asked if I’d ever watched Sex and the City. Truth: I had never seen a full episode. Shortly thereafter, like a good Seattlelite, I went to the public library website and placed a hold on the first season DVD of Sex and the City.

This week, at long last, I received an email that the DVD was available. I picked it up and confession: I watched the entire first season in one week. And, I’m hooked.

The above meal was consumed one night this week with my laptop open in front of me playing episode after episode of Sex and the City. It was lovely. I’ve placed holds on Season 2, 3, & 4 and plan to spend those occasional dreary Seattle summer evenings in a similar manner.