Criminy is perplexed by this “moving” thing we’re doing. On the one paw, lots of boxes to perch on. On the other, all of his preciouses keep disappearing. 🤨
Animal Crossing in real life: a pink windflower! 🌸
We emptied the display cabinet that holds our dearest artifacts. Astounding how a simple physical movement disgorges the soul of a place. This is the part of moving I get superstitious about: How will our ghosts know where to haunt us?
Getting used to how the front door opens, how the stairs creak halfway up, where the late afternoon light seeps in: small, tender moments of acquaintance. Feeling more at home by degrees.
First raspberry harvest at our new place, carried in white glass bowls that once belonged to my nonna.
Fun identifying plants in the new garden. “What’s this one?” “It’s a … whoa, it’s a strawberry!” 🍓
🔖 Read With Rising Book Bans, Librarians Have Come Under Attack - The New York Times: “Many librarians have quit — or lost their jobs — after clashes over books.” If this worries you, it should.
🔖 Read Libraries Are Becoming a Battleground for LGBTQ+ People: “It’s not just in-person attacks. Librarians say they are increasingly facing online harassment…” Can confirm. And it will only get worse.
Bees in lavender. 🐝
Achievement unlocked: FunkyPlaid and I attended our new neighborhood’s annual potluck and no one got hurt or offended. (That we know of.) Friendly faces, perfect weather, tasty treats! I made blueberry corn salsa and bacon-wrapped dates.
Initially, our local home improvement store struck me as the anti-library, with products arranged in loose groupings only experts could fathom. Then I got the app! Over-reliance on a catalog for findability is an example of exclusive design.
The first two weeks
The first two weeks of homeownership have been filled with incremental joys. I’m afraid to lose them to time, to a dependence on a type of memory I lack, so I’ll share them here.
This will be the only time we won’t have to make any effort for the rewards of fresh vegetables in our garden. I eagerly plucked three red beets from one of the raised beds and will roast them, sauté the greens, enjoy how little I did for such delight.
Mopping the floors on the hottest day of the summer wasn’t the brightest idea I’ve ever had. Sweat pouring down my face, I scrubbed away the last bits of the house’s previous chapter, leaving behind the scent of Murphy Oil Soap. This distinctive scent permeates my earliest memories, and again the memories of our first visits to Portland, where we’d encounter it during our stays at McMenamin’s properties.
We have both red and golden raspberry plants now, which feels ridiculously luxurious but is a thing that happens, has happened, to other people for ages and I’m adjusting to it happening to me. Also, I watched a scrub jay yank a berry right off one of the plants and abscond with it. I was both impressed and miffed.
What I don’t have photos for (so this lovely hydrangea will have to suffice):
- Using all of my meager upper-body strength to use the weed-pulling device on dandelions. Clearly this is not a job for my musculature but it was fun to try.
- Adjusting to the sounds of the house, emptied, but gently filling with our breakables and those items we can live without until moving day. Different surfaces, different tones.
- FunkyPlaid’s face when he discovers how to do a new thing at the house. It’s the best to watch someone you love be enriched by something they’ve longed for.
- Hearing the birds (including that berry-stealing rapscallion scrub jay), not as many burly crows as our old place, but more of the tiny sort that I lump erroneously into the “chickadee” category.
- Meeting new neighbors, and hoping we won’t disappoint them or they us.
- Feeling emotions that weren’t mine, residue left behind that we dust and mop and sweep away. Having an overactive imagination and instinct for storytelling imbues even the smallest moving-related chores with melodrama. By the time I get to, “I wonder who pulled this door closed while regretting what they said,” I know it’s over and I need to put on a podcast to entertain that part of my brain.
This part is slow and fast all at once, my favorite tempo. Moving day is a two and a half weeks away now. Here we (continue to) go!
Great turnout at the Tigard Juneteenth celebration today, despite multiple downpours! I’m hilariously bad at remembering to take photos during events, but I did get one of the pretty balloons and sign.
The only photo I managed to take at Tigard Pride last Sunday was of a tiny snippet of chalk art. But it’s a good one. 🏳️🌈
Bright pink peonies in the garden. Our garden. Of our new house. It doesn’t seem real quite yet, but I imagine lugging several hundred books and two skittish kitties across town will fix that.
Upheaval. Saying goodbye to cherished coworkers who are flying away to other opportunities. How much of my sadness during the past two years have I wrapped so tightly in denial, in “pushing through”?
Today a friend showed me Howbout, a charming app for planning get-togethers with friends. In less than five minutes our group had created a poll, voted, and planned our next socially-distanced hangout. I’m impressed!
Today I did something I’m not very good at – recording a video with someone I admire and respect – and I dearly hope that the final product shows just how amazing a librarian and person she is. Any tips for an amateur video editor?
I got angry this morning, and wanted to listen to angry music to feel better, but I don’t have an angry music playlist. This seems like a huge oversight on my part. Suggestions? (Also, yes, the oversight made me even angrier.)
My beloved Sash Bag is out of commission because a pen leaked inside it. And it wasn’t even a fountain pen; it was a Pilot G-2 mini gel pen, and sadly this is not the first time it has happened, so I’m going to stop using them. The end of an era!
The Anti-Racism Daily newsletter’s Sunday issue has resources on the Buffalo attack, including Black-led organizations in Buffalo that we can support. Donating is something tangible that we can do in the wake of horrific tragedy like this.
Years ago, I won a Pelikan P205 with a broad nib in a giveaway, but never really used it. Kirk Speer of Pen Realm gave it a Broad Architect custom grind today, and I love it! 🖋 It was so fun meeting Kirk and witnessing his skill in action.
Secret swan at Bosky Dell Natives, a nursery specializing in PNW plants. 🌿 We visited today to choose plants for the library’s rock garden.
I am confident that there are better uses of my limited brain cells than storing the entirety of Dana Carvey’s “Choppin' Broccoli” skit, over three decades later, but here we are.
I am overdue for a haircut, but I keep pushing my appointment date out due to the local spike in COVID cases, so I guess I’ll succumb to my inevitable final form as a wandering crone housing small woodland creatures in her tangled mane.
