moving on...for now.

well, friends, i think i have to say this. i think this lovely blog has laid dormant for too long and i need to own up to the reality: i'm blogged out. i've mostly moved my daily commentary on my own life to facebook. my reflections on identity are at www.fromthepewsintheback.com and www.youngadultcatholics-blog.com. my more intellectual pursuits are soon to be at www.patheos.com in the Catholic discussion forum. i think it's enough for now. i am scattered out in the ethos and am no longer using this blog as a part of that scatter.

i might return. especially when i have internet access at home in evanston (or if at&t allows the iphone internet tethering in the u.s.!). and when i do, i'll probably post something about it at facebook.

i love this blog. thank you for being a part of it.

best seat

All this seating & this is definately the best seat in the house.

My growing connection

So ever since i moved to the island,i feel like blue herons have been
following me around. They land on the dock and are so close to the
boat, it takes my breath away!

sunset

living room

the back yard

deer!

This is an honest-to-god deer swimming out the back of the boat.

Whoa. Who knew they could swim?

Boat life

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update coming soon!

wahoo!! internet arrives on the boat tomorrow!! and then its back to my regular blogging ways:). indeed, i have pics of the boat, videos of our recently running water, & even some sea lions having a very nice time chasing fish off the edge of our boat. all coming soon!

ah, the pain & join of anticipation:)

electronic toothbrush

so i finally caved in & went with my dentist's recommendation: i bought & am now using an electronic toothbrush.  happily, i was able to find a much more affordable model than i had thought possible.  so i'm just into it & learning how to make sure toothpaste doesn't fly everywhere.

and, whoa, the 2 minutes built into the functioning of the brush is a lot longer time than i expected!

boats & the like

okay, so it turns out my last blog post was vague, at best. here's the low-down on the boat. we're moving aboard at the end of the month! so greg is working very hard to make it ready to go while i spend time blogging:). we put down some new flooring & greg's working on something electrical. and i'm shopping for a used full-size mattress that will fit!

part of the reason for the live-aboard life is because i've been accepted to phd school at northwestern and am going to go. wahoo! just call me a wildcat. (which is funny to me because right now i work at WSU, whose mascot is a cougar...and wildcats are kind of related to cougars, right?)

g's going to stay here, at least for the first year. so living on a boat that we bought out of foreclosure will be much easier than having two rents!

that's right, ladies & gentlemen, i'm going to be a midwesterner again.

the real question is: will i change the name of this blog again?

house boat? yacht?

G tells me this is a yacht.  I say, well, we're going to be living on it...it's a houseboat.

oh my gosh

oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.

so.  this morning (early, like 7am), g goes across the street (we live across the street from a grocery store) to get some cream for his coffee.  on his way back, he noticed a purse near the drive-by post-box.  friendly, he picks it up & brings it home.

for me, this is the stuff of movies or television shows--mystery bag, mystery person, all left up to unsuspecting neighbors to figure out!

the bag looked like a teeny-bopper's, so i was surprised to find her id card say she was born 2/27/1926!  very hip for an almost-83 pisces. and her jazzy cell phone was much cooler than either greg or mine's.  creepily, was able to google her name & get her landline, which we promptly called...no answer.

(and, okay, okay.  i couldn't resist.  i did look a little bit through her bag...just one of the two pockets.  she had all these $2 bills. for the grandkids?  and a really great flashlight.  and every single piece of identification she must own.  holy cow.)

a few hours later, a woman called looking for her mom. so i explained the situation & she came by to pick up the purse.  i asked her her mom's birthday, just to be sure.  creepy or smart of me?

apparently, all the sisters are worried about their mom since no one has heard from her all day (maybe because she lost her phone?) and she was supposed to be on something called a "discovery tour" and was to leave her car parked at shopko.  another sister was on her way to check on the shopko parking lot.

mystery ended...for me.  but i wonder if something will show up in the olympian later??

wet day in oly

today was a wet day.  it didn't rain at all, but sometimes it doesn't matter--the air felt heavy with water and the moisture weighed down on town.  sort of like walking around in a cold, brisk cloud.

i actually accidentally spent most of the day inside.  we have the final draft of our manuscript and are re-reading it for little typos the publishers might have missed or any last-minute little changes.  so wild to see it coming together.  what's sort of funny is that when j & i started this project, we figured it'd take a year...max.  not so, friends; but its definitely happening.  

anyway, so i sort of came out of a haze around 4pm and realized i hadn't been outside since my run. so i hustled out the door for a walk and was unprepared for how cold & wet it was!  definitely wish i had remembered my mittens since i was trying to talk on the cell phone at the same time.  my hands got cold!  but it was lovely to be outside in the last moments of daylight.  

por fin!

ladies & gentlemen.

i would like to introduce you to the newest member of our little family: the red couch!! (check out this blog post for commentary on the process this couch involved).

rainforest driving

this morning I was driving through the southern end of the olympic peninsula for work...west out of olympia, almost to aberdeen (that's right!  aberdeen, wa; not sodak!), turned north at brady and ended up at mary m. knight elementary in elma.  it was a long drive; much longer than i expected and i had to stop once for directions since google maps led me slightly astray.   but it was lovely. 

one of the things i missed in alaska was driving. the 40 or so miles of road we had in juneau just didn't do it. no fun. i know the environmental impact is disgusting and i think i do an okay job of not driving unnecessarily.  so perhaps it was the combination of those two things, along with the glorious morning in the rainforest, that made this morning's drive quite beautiful.  

washington state...its hard to beat.

the countdown begins

folks!  i cannot believe it...i am a month away from 29.  as is my custom, i have entered the birthday countdown.  feb. 25 is less than 30 days.

29.  whoa.

4 jobs, 2 months

Since landing back in the Pacific Northwest, I have started four jobs and quit three.  Shew.  Not something I'm particularly proud of since it really accents a flakiness in myself that I like to keep more undercover than as a mode of operation.  

Back in November, I took a quick & dirty job as a cashier at Target.  Big Brothers Big Sisters then hired me as a part-time match support specialist...a job I was actually psyched about.  But when Foster Care at a local nonprofit offered me full-time for the part-time job I had interviewed for, I had to go with the benefits package.  All the while, I was still in the running for a job at Mason Co. Extension & the Squaxin Island Tribe.  They had a very slow process, complicated by weather and new management.  So when they finally offered me the job, I gave my notice to Foster Care...and put my quitting flakiness to rest.  For now.

So now I'm a Nutrition Educator for the federal Food$ense program--teaching communities & kids about affordable ways to eat healthy (bad logo, good probram).  That's right...I do some cooking for a living.  Scary, I agree!  I'm 75% out at the Tribe and 25% in low-income schools in Mason County (just west of Thurston County, where Olympia is).  

I started on Inauguration Day.  What a day for new beginnings!