little black journal

I spent last weekend down in Portland and realized that my blog was due for an Elise update.My precious little baby niece is becoming more and more of a little girl each time I see her.Smiling more, laughing more, babbling more, and taking more of an interest in whatever it is that’s going on around her. She loves to look at books (future book club member-in-training!) and is so content to sit on her blanket and flip through one of her stories.  She is a snuggler, too, which I am quick to take advantage of.  On Sunday morning before I left, I spent a good thirty minutes on the couch with her in my lap, while she studied my face and played with my hair.  The silver charm bracelet I was wearing was a big hit with her as well, so I shamelessly used that as a distraction to hold on to her for just a little bit longer.  The minute we left town, I was immediately wondering when I will see her again – a single weekend every couple of months feels far too infrequent during this period when she’s growing and changing so rapidly, but I’m thankful, nonetheless, for whatever time I do get to spend with her.  I’m becoming more and more attached to this little person who is developing and demonstrating her own personality and likes and dislikes. And it’s exciting to know that in the not-too-distant future, she’ll truly know me as “Auntie Kelly” and will begin to recognize me when I walk in the door. Can’t wait to see what lies around the corner with this little girl…

Shane and I were in need of a date, and the weather today lent itself perfectly to an outdoor rendez-vous.  Yes, that’s right, the sun shone in Seattle today!  A January miracle…  We thought the west-facing view from Lincoln Park in West Seattle would be ideal for sunset-watching, and so we hopped in the car and made the quick drive over there.  Man, it felt good to be enjoying the outdoors after so many days of being cooped up inside.  Rejuvenating.

Our prayers were answered and the weather cleared up enough on Christmas Eve afternoon for us to make the trek down to Portland.  We have spent the past two days taking refuge from the cold winter weather in my brother and sister-in-law’s warm, welcoming home; indulging in all kinds of baked goodies; and enjoying the blessing of family.  Good memories have been made of watching Elise experience her first Christmas, sharing an un-traditional holiday meal of fajitas, and simply sitting around together in the living room, relaxing and chatting and watching the snow fall outside.

Thanks be to God for the blessings he has lavished upon us, the foremost of these being his Son.  May you carry the peace and hope offered by the birth of Jesus Christ into the year to come.

Strange weather in Seattle these days.  We awoke to the sound of hail on Thursday at 4:30 am, thunder shook our house around 5:30, and snow fell throughout almost the entire day.  I debated about whether or not to brave the elements and head into work, but as the snow continued to pile up, and as I watched buses spin their tires and then just sit by the side of the road near our house, I decided to declare Thursday a snow day.  I bundled up (in my totally insufficient snow gear, aka jeans and rubber rain boots), and we spent some time playing in the snow with the neighbor kids.  I wimped out after only a few minutes and headed inside to thaw out, but Shane spent most of the morning throwing snowballs.  Around noon we were ready for another adventure and so we gathered up the neighbors, called up some friends, and embarked on a 20-minute trek to the bakery.  The chilly walk there was totally worth it.  Not just for the creamy latte and buttery scone, but because it was so much fun to sit around a table in this cozy neighborhood bakery and share this snow day with some of our closest friends.  And the fact that it was a Thursday, and we all really should have been working, made it that much sweeter.  I felt like I was back in Junior High, cutting school to go hang out at a friend’s house and eat ice cream.  The rest of the afternoon was spent at home, drinking hot tea and enjoying the sight of the final flakes of snow falling outside.  We had weathered the storm and had a lot of fun doing it.

Friday was business as usual for the most part.  I headed into work in the morning, grateful for a chance to be productive, but a little disappointed to see our pretty white blanket of snow slowly disappearing.  Ah well, it was fun while it lasted…  But tonight, the snow came back in full force.  The tracks in and out of our driveway from our 5 pm grocery run have already been buried.  Shane, feeling antsy at the sight of so much fresh powder, headed out 30 minutes ago to attempt to build a snowman (yes, at 11:00 at night), but he found the snow too dry to be proper snowman material, so he had to content himself with helping push stuck cars up the hill near our house (this has come to be his new favorite pastime).  Seems I married a man with the heart of a big kid and the muscles of a huge stud.  Score.  I’m looking forward to getting up tomorrow and seeing how much fresh snow has accumulated.  I wonder how much longer I have until the novelty of this winter wonderland wears off?

_

Winter has arrived in Seattle, snow and below-freezing temperatures and all.  Around 8:00 last night, what started as a light “drizzle” of snow turned into more of a snow “shower”  – Shane and I came home from a Christmas party around 11 to find our neighborhood covered with a puffy white blanket.  It was lovely.  We stood for a minute on the sidewalk and noted that it was so calm, serene, quiet.  I snuggled into bed last night, looking forward to a Sunday morning with a hot cup of coffee and a chair by the window where I could fully enjoy this winter wonderland.  But our morning turned out to be a little less peaceful than planned, as we woke to the screeching of spinning tires.  A car had gotten stuck on the ice on the hill in front of our house.  Shane, being the good neighbor that he is, threw on jeans and a coat and headed out to help push the car up the road.  Whew.  But then another car got stuck.  And another.  One more.  Shane was quite the stud, coming to the rescue left and right.  I, on the other hand, stayed in my pajamas all day, venturing out of the house just for a moment to snap a couple of quick photos.

Shane and I embarked on our third annual Christmas tree hunt yesterday.  We stayed true to tradition and went to the same tree farm out in the North Bend that we’ve enjoyed so much the past two years.  We bundled up, grabbed a saw, and spent nearly an hour wandering around the farm, in search of that perfect tree.  After examining all of the possibilities and asking each other, “Is that one too tall?  Too short?  Is it full enough?  Too full?  Are all of these starting to look the same to you?”, we settled on a 7-foot tall Douglas Fir.  Shane hacked it down with a few swift strokes of the saw, we paid our bill (while helping ourselves to some complimentary apple cider – mmm…), and the tree was ours.  The next task at hand was getting this thing home – in previous years, we’ve put down the back seats of our Civic and jammed our poor little tree inside the car.  This year, we were bold enough to strap it to the roof of our Honda Civic, despite the fact we don’t have a roof rack.  Twenty minutes later, we had it all tied up, but since neither one of us have our knot-tying badges, we were a little anxious about just how secure the tree actually was.  The parking lot attendant’s last words to us as we left were, “You’ll be ok, if you don’t drive fast.”  Ummm… we had thirty miles of freeway separating us from our house.  To the chagrin of all the other cars on I-90, we drove 50 mph the whole way home.  But we made it, with tree still in tow.

Then came the fun of stringing lights and decorating the tree.  My mom and dad have been giving me a Christmas ornament every year since I was a kid, so opening up the ornament box unlocks all sorts of fond memories.  It’s fun to think that I have been unwrapping and hanging some of these same ornaments for over 20 years.  I will sacrifice a perfectly decorated, color-coordinated tree any day for a tree with meaning.  And all of of my varied little angels, and glass kittens, and plastic snowflakes are quite lovely, actually…

It feels good to be back in Seattle, but I am more and more coming to appreciate the small-town charms and natural beauty of rural Minnesota.  There are so many things that set it apart from city living.  For example, you don’t see signs like this at the sporting goods store in downtown Seattle:

Seriously, though, small-town living does have its charm.  It was strange to go to the mall with Shane’s mom and sister and see them run into at least 10 people that they knew.  It’s very rare that Shane and I run into people we know downtown, and never do we run into anyone that we’ve known for the last 20 years.  Traffic seems non-existent, people are friendly, and there is something very sustainable about filling your freezer with the fruits of your hunting and fishing expeditions (although I don’t think I’ll ever be much of a hunter, I can appreciate this form of “living off the land”).  And the scenery is beautiful.  The golden fields of corn and wheat are lovely in their sparseness, and it seems you can’t drive more than a mile without coming across a lake.  I loved hopping in the car with Shane and going for destination-less drives, just enjoying the countryside.

I’d say my heart still belongs to the city, but this is a perfect place to get away, relax, and enjoy time with family.

Saturday night I tore myself away from my study materials (sweet relief!) and Shane and I headed over to Capitol Hill to enjoy an evening of live music.  We bought tickets a few weeks ago for the “Hotel Cafe Tour” solely because we are both big fans of Rachel Yamagata, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that the four other artists on tour with her were extremely (though not equally) talented.  Meiko opened the show and was charming and beautiful, with her incredibly sweet voice.  She makes strumming the guitar look deceivingly effortless.  Emily Wells has this very cool hip-hop/violin/live-mixing-chamber thing going on.  With the use of a recorder and some fancy equipment, she layers her vocals over her violin over a deep hip-hop beat to create this fascinating “one person symphony”.  I was entranced.  Lenka was good, though quite bubbly, and possibly a little too Feist-like.  I like Feist, but I also like originality.  Thao Nguyen was so much fun to watch, with the way she bopped around stage with her guitar.  She reminded me a little of Bjork, but still had her own thing gong on.  She’s one of those singers that can “scream” and still make it sound musical.  And then there was Rachel Yamagata.  This woman blows me away.  She can sit at a piano and woo you with her deep, bluesy voice, and then stand up and rock out on her guitar like the bad-ass that she is.  All in all, a very good show.  And it was nice to see something in a small venue like Chop Suey – we weren’t more than 15 feet from the stage.  The performer-audience interaction that comes with such a small space adds a lot to the experience.

All of that said, I have a confession: I am not perfectly cut out for this whole hip live music scene.  After two hours of standing in the middle of the crowd on the beer-splashed concrete floor, my feet began to hurt, my back began to ache, and I became increasingly irritated by all of the concert-goers around me.  I was annoyed by the guy standing next to me who keep swaying to the music and bumping into my shoulder.  This dude in front of me with the biggest hair ever kept blocking my view of the stage.  I started to wish that I’d worn shoes that were more orthopedically supportive, rather than my cute little ballet flats.  And I was hot, desperately wanting some fresh air, but not wanting to give up my spot so close to the stage.  Tiredness set in around 11:30, and I was trying to hide the fact that I couldn’t help yawning every 10 minutes.  Is it possible that at the young age of 27, I have become so un-hip that I can’t thoroughly enjoy a two and a half-hour set?  Are Shane and I resigned to a lifetime of spending Saturday nights at home, eating ice cream in our pj’s?  Hopefully not (though I do love our weekend pajama parties…).  I’ll pretend I’m cool for at least another couple of years.

I know my blog has been kind of “foliage-focused” lately, but I can’t help myself – I am absolutely obsessed with the colors of the fall this year.  This morning, I noticed the large number of leaves littering the sidewalks and lawns and realized that this weekend might be one of my last chances to capture this autumn season in all its glory.  So despite the drizzle, I grabbed my camera and headed out to the Japanese garden in the arboretum (thank you, Jon and La Verne, for the inspiration!).

Proof that these leaves won’t be around much longer…

I’m afraid I was already a little too late in certain instances…

Is it really possible that December is just around the corner?  This shot sure makes Seattle look “wintry”…

p.s.  Special thanks to Shane for the super-awesome lens that he bought me for my camera last month.  It’s serving me well!

Already chipping away at number #9 on my “27 before 28” list – today was the 5k Pumpkin Push run at Seward Park.  When Shane told me last weekend that he wanted to run in it, my reaction was, “Have fun with that.  I’ll hang out at the finish line and sip a latte while you run your butt off.”  But somehow I ended up enrolling in the race as well, with only enough time to do a couple of very last-minute training runs.  And although there was a point this morning about 2/3 into the race when I seriously considered stepping aside, laying down on the grass, and calling it a day, I did indeed finish.  And I wasn’t last.  What a relief.  I’m so glad I let Shane talk me into participating.  The weather today was fantastic, and it was fun to be a part of the excited buzz that flowed among the runners as we lined up at the starting line.  I loved the course (I believe I have mentioned before how lucky I feel to live just a couple of miles from Seward Park), with the exception of the hilly detour that occurred somewhere around kilometer 3.  The perimeter of the park is flat, but this run took us up a hill into the center of the park and back down again.  I was doing pretty well for the first couple of miles, and then I hit that hill and instantly felt like 30-pound weights had been strapped to each of my ankles.  Man, I was dragging.  It was painful.  But I pushed through it, despite the overwhelming desire to walk, or stop altogether.  And once I got down the hill, I found that I had just enough energy left to sprint to the finish line.  Mission completed.  Sweet victory!