I’m thankful for YOU! Keep welcoming refugees, providing healthcare to all, using your words instead of your guns, and treating the rest of the world to pictures of shirtless prime ministers.

Love you and miss you all!

(Editor’s Note: The Husband says this is my “smuggest post” ever. Sorry! I totes don’t mean it that way. It’s just that I love living here so much. And I loved my lives in Winnipeg and Minneapolis so much that I honestly didn’t think lightning could strike three times like this. Fortunately, “loving where you live” isn’t a zero sum game and you, too, can find a pocket of “Portland” wherever you are where the pressure is low and the love for simple things is great. If you’re not sure where that might be, look up your local urban Mennonites – they’ve usually got a head start in those areas.)

A few weeks ago, my friend/cousin (fruzzin?) was visiting and she remarked, “No wonder you love it here. Portland totally suits you guys.”

That thought’s been rattling around in my head ever since. We *do* love it here – but why? Why does this place feel like home already, so much so that when the plane landed from Memphis, I felt a surge of relief at “being back”?

I think that our experience of Portland so far can be summed up in this one pic:

A summer concert, everyone relaxing outside and listening to great music and drinking good beer, and one guy is having such a good time he spends the entire time standing and clapping along and nobody. cares. at. all.

Portlanders are all about living the good life. They love experiences and spend their time pursuing pleasure. Not in a hedonistic or decadent kind of way, but more just enjoying the everyday.

The most obvious here is the treatment of beer and food. I tried searching for “Portland brunch” once, and I got over 3000 hits.

(I’ll save you some time – it’s Screen Door for the win.)

Beer is a religion here. This is John’s Marketplace, our local place of worship:

(The first row is only Portland beer. Then it moves to Greater Portland, West Coast, Rest of US, and then Global in the back. You can buy Kokanee in the Canadian section! Not that you would, of course. Yesterday I had the most amazing quad that was basically the love child of a Belgian monk and a Manhattan.)

Heck, even the GAS STATIONS have taps where you can fill your growlers:

And you’re never more than a stone’s throw from amazing food to go with your choice of libations.

(The pic on the left is the outdoor patio at the little butcher shop about six blocks away. Come for the small-batch cured meats, stay for the local cheese plate lovingly prepared by my bestie, Amy the Butcher.)

In some places, this kind of enjoyment of food/drink would come with a healthy serving of pretension, but honestly, I haven’t seen much of it (or else I’m just so much of a precious hipster myself that I don’t notice). Portlanders take their food seriously, but not themselves.

The dress code in Portland is decidedly “casual.” Anything goes, but it’s typically jeans/flannel-adjacent. A few months ago The Husband was treated to a man wearing a one-piece lady’s swimsuit on his bus ride. (And that’s all he was wearing.) If I wear a dress to the grocery store, I get admiring looks (I even had a lady stop to tell me “you are so elegant” as I waited in line to pick up a prescription. It was just a basic dress I’ve been wearing to work for years.)

(The Girl especially loves the sartorial freedom. She’s applauded for dressing authentically here, where at her old school they made fun of her. Granted, she *was* wearing this giant onesie, but this outfit was a total non-issue here.)

Portland loves a party, too. This year was the first annual Mermaid Festival (which coincided nicely with Pirate Days so when I went to the market after my haircut I saw both Ariel and Captain Jack Sparrow). Opening a bridge after months of construction? Better inaugurate it properly with a weekend festival complete with live music and (the ubiquitous) food carts:

And, of course, there’s the awesomeness of being completely bathed in Nature. There’s a forest and/or a mountain and/or a waterfall around every corner.

Plus the OCEAN is a quick drive away.

One of the offshoots of valuing new experiences and not taking themselves too seriously is that Portlanders have a really positive attitude toward trying new things. When we moved to Minnesota, we looked into starting The Boy into hockey. But at age 6 (SIX!!!) he was already too old to join any of his friends. They’d all started at three. And were doing seven ice-times a week, out-of-state tournaments, and year-round camps before they were teenagers.

Here? The Boy was able to start with almost no knowledge of the game and quickly found himself a house league where he’s learning and hanging around with a bunch of other kids at the same level. He loves it, and his parents love that it’s only a few times a week and there’s no pressure on him other than to try hard and have fun.

Or consider The Girl. She’s discovered that she loves working with metal and wood. And between a blacksmithing apprenticeship and being a TA for her woodshop teacher, she’s got loads of opportunities to hone her skills.

Portland is definitely weird. They funnel their civic pride into the local soccer team and the entire endzone is a sold-out, standing-room-only, two-hour bacchanalia of beer and chanting known as the Timbers Army.

(The game was hilarious. During the National Anthem, everyone fills in the pauses between the lines with a “pssssh” sound and does this flingy thing with their Timbers scarves. When someone scores a goal, this massive lumberjack man fires up a CHAINSAW and saws a round off this huge tree and parades through the stands with it.)

Even a neighbourhood walk yields signs of the strange.

(That’s Claire, the neighbours’ chicken. She lays incredible eggs. She’s also “the smart one” and knows how to get out of the backyard, but she just takes herself for little walks and then happily returns home.)

And the pace of life here is so relaxed. One time I ordered food at a food cart (the grilled cheese one! Our fave) and the girl asked if I’d just moved to Portland. “You talk so fast! I’m from Iowa so I’m used to it, but I’ve had to sloooooow right down since I moved here. It’s strange to hear that again!” Nobody’s in much of a rush and there’s no desperate need to chase success.

(Literally “time to smell the roses.” And pet neighbour cats.)

The tag line for Portlandia is that Portland is “where young people go to retire.” I don’t think that’s truly possible any longer – jobs are few and far between and the housing costs don’t allow anyone to live on a part-time barista’s salary anymore. HOWEVER, that ethos is still here. This sense that life isn’t about constant striving or keeping up with the Joneses or spending all your time papering the walls with diplomas or racing to the next status level. The people here are smart and passionate, but they are also quirky and content.

Smart, passionate, quirky, content…yeah, I’m guessing there’s a reason we fit in so well. 😉

First, the bun is back!

At my last haircut, I fell prey to the “I’ve had the same hair for three years am I looking dated?” fear and replaced my standard “just a trim” with “how about we take off six inches or so?”

(Fortunately, even *I* am not dumb enough to convince myself that bangs will transform my look from “introverted tech writer” to “edgy Portlander in the creative class.”)

The cut was fine, but I suddenly realized how dependent I was on the bun – not just as a quick solution to “I didn’t feel like washing my hair. Again.”, but also because it makes me feel profesh.

Yay to quick-growing locks because the bun is back in business! Hope you like it, cuz I learned my lesson and won’t change my hair for at least another four years.

Second, my new passport just arrived and glory be, the latest version of the Canadian passport requires only one signature:

(Yes, I just posted my scary-looking passport photo on the interwebs. Self-confidence for daaaaaays over here!)

The old-style passport used to include the signature you used on your application and then you re-signed it when you received your actual passport so (theoretically and as proof you’re the same person) they matched.

Not a problem for most people, but for some reason, I cannot master the Adulting 101 requirement of a consistent signature.

(I comfort myself by saying Shakespeare’s signature was never the same twice either. At least I can spell it right every time.)

You only get one chance to get it right. If you mess up, you’re stuck with mismatched signatures for five years.

Think nobody compares them? Tell that to the eagle-eyed airport security lady who said flatly, “your signatures don’t match.”

(Cue frantic sweaty babbling about how I always have trouble and the pen slipped and I’d been signing so many things that day and all the prior ones were right and would you like to see my driver’s license and credit cards and see how they’re all kind of in the same ballpark?)

I was EXTRA worried this time because I sprang for the 10-year one. That’s a LONG time to experience signature anxiety every time you cross borders.

Now as long as they don’t ask me to replicate it in real-time, I’m set! And I have ten years to try to figure out how to do it right!

…but it seems to me that this not the wisest choice of class project for 8th grade wood shop:

Action shot:

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What it feels like when I see him:

We went to The South!

Oh my. Can confirm, DEFINITELY armed.

We made some besties back in our Minneapolis days and they up and moved to Memphis on us. They currently have four babies aged five and under (Oh. My. Lanta!) and we’d only met Babies #1 and #2, so when The Husband had a work trip to Nashville, the kids and I were more than happy to meet him there and then pile in the car to descend upon our friends.

(Oh Emmanuel peeps – I know you are SO jealous!)

Priority number one was good old fashioned “hanging out” and we got to do that in spades.

And there was baby holding. So much baby holding!

We also got to see Memphis at its finest. First, the National Civil Rights Museum. It was truly amazing and humbling and I cried and there were Freedom Buses and lunch counters and emancipation and THE hotel balcony.

(And I left feeling inspired and self-congratulatory and “phew so glad that’s in the past” and then I turned on the news this week and oh my there is still so much to do….)

We ate the best fried chicken in Memphis – Gus’s!

And then we left the kiddos behind and did some grownup hanging out on Beale Street.

Followed by more grownup (plus one nursing baby) time at a beer garden on a beautiful night with great music.

Did I mention the baby holding?

There was also pretty much the craziest destination I’ve ever visited. Imagine if The Luxor hotel in Vegas and Cabela’s had a baby:

That baby would be the “Bass Pro Shops” in Memphis. (Plus bonus Ducks Unlimited heritage centre.)

Oh. My.

Hmm, which gun should I buy?

There’s even an observatory at the top (complete with restaurant, natch).

See that little island just to the right of The Girl? That’s Mud Island, and that’s where we finished up our weekend jaunt with some wading in a scale model of the Mississippi (plus just getting dresses and shorts wet for the under-five set).

We packed a lot in, but the bestest of all was just catching up and watching our kids delight in each other just like the good old days. Thanks, Memphis BFFs for your Southern hospitality! And your babies. Always your babies.

So I bet y’all think that Chez PM is a never-ending carousel of cool concerts and surfing and lazy brunches and hikes and indie movies and [insert superfun thing here]. Well, those things do happen. But we also experience this little thing called reality. And, in the interest of making sure that this little corner of the interwebs isn’t merely my highlight reel – guess what I did this last weekend?

Rose City Comic Con?

Nope. It looked cool, though.

Start your blacksmithing apprenticeship?

Nope. The Girl did, though.

Go to the church fall kick-off and start the fun Sunday School classes and meet the new youth pastor and enjoy potluck and chatting and watching The Boy get a pie in the face during the games?

Nope. That would be the entire family but me.

Well, what on earth did you do then?

This.

Oh yes, I got to have dental surgery!

OMG. There must be a backstory to this…

Indeed. It actually all started three years ago. In Trafalgar Square in London of all places.

(Actually it probably started a bit earlier than that. I do love my parents somethin’ good, but alas, they gave me some fairly crappy teeth. Nine fillings by age nine, yo!)

So one of said fillings had been turned into a crown some years back and then in London we hit a candy shop (you can see The Girl with her lollipop) and I bought toffee (because I WAS IN LONDON! IT’S A REQUIREMENT!) and we were walking and touristing and suddenly I felt a weird pop and holy guacamole there was a TOOTH stuck in my toffee. (Well, more accurately, a crown.)

Inwardly freaking out (OMG I AM VERY FAR FROM HOME AND IT’S ONLY THE BEGINNING OF OUR VACATION AND IS THERE A DENTIST BESIDE THE BRITISH LIBRARY) but outwardly very calm (because Mom), I casually took said crown and popped it back on.

And there it stayed, thank goodness! And we made it through the vacation without having to hit up the Canadian embassy (seen in the background – don’t you love that it’s right there?) for a dentist.

(Aside: Do you think you need to go through the embassy for a dentist abroad? I feel like I would want to – maybe there’s a Commonwealth discount!)

Anywho, at my post-vacation crown re-cementing there were warnings about “not a whole lotta tooth left underneath” (hola mom and dad!) and that this was probably a stop-gap and blah blah “next step is surgery” blah blah “not sure if this will work….”

In retrospect, probably amazing that it was fine for two and half years after all that. But alas, the reckoning came and the intermittent pain I’ve been trying to ignore since Christmas became un-ignorable and I found myself in that blasted chair yet again.

Shout out to “happy pills” and laughing gas – I hardly remember the surgery itself! And MASSIVE accolades to The Husband who drove my high-as-a-kite self  home, put me to bed, and went out to buy soup and fill prescriptions. I spent the weekend on strong antibiotics and pain pills (which I’ve since discontinued because they’re those crazy addictive ones and I feel like this tooth has cost me enough without adding “opioid addiction” to my life).

And a shout out to my kiddos who were very kind and prayed for me and kept coming into see how I was doing. And especially The Boy who made it a whole 24 hours before asking, “when are you going to make dinner? When are you going to clean the kitchen? When are you going to be a mom again?”

So, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns over here all the time. Sometimes it’s penicillin and lentil soup and chipmunk cheeks. But no toffee. Never toffee.

(And don’t worry – this isn’t the last you’ll hear about my teeth! Watch this space for our next episodes entitled “Here, Wear This Retainer 22 Hours A Day So Your Gap Tooth Stays Gappy” and “Adventures in Implants: You’re Gonna Drill a Screw Into My JawBone?!”)

[PS. Thank you Jesus for dental insurance and oral sedation and dentists who soothe you when you say “I’m terrified” and husbands who heat up split pea soup Amen.]

Crossed an item off my bucket list last night that I didn’t even realize was on it.

I got to watch Willy Wonka in an actual movie theatre! Pretty much felt like this:

I think I was maybe nine years old the first time I saw this movie? It was the day before school vacation (probably spring break, because the day before Christmas break we had assembly in the gym and sang Christmas carols and ate candy canes). We all filed excitedly into the Southwood School gym, sat in rows with smallest grades in the front and biggest grades in the back, and settled in for a fine afternoon.

(Oh yeah – it was TOTALLY reel-to-reel. We all got up for a two-minute stretch when they had to change the reels.)

I’ve loved this movie ever since. I would rent it when I was a kid and disappear into the basement with whatever junk food I could find. As an adult, I finally bought a copy and would pick up a few bars of chocolate and treat myself to weekend viewings. But I never dreamed I’d get to see it on the big screen!

And yet again, Portland delivers.

Our fave little indie movie theatre scheduled two showings in honour of Gene Wilder’s passing and I knew I had to go. The kids joined me, but The Husband stayed home (he finds the movie creepy for some reason…).

Oh, it was so amazing! I never realized how hilarious it was until I got to watch it with a laughing audience. Or how much more fun it is when you share it with a couple hundred other people. And not gonna lie – I totally teared up when Charlie saw that flash of gold.

In honour of the occasion, I even did something I’ve never done before. I did the real-life equivalent of stealing fizzy lifting drink and snuck in these:

Now I’m all for supporting movie theatres, particularly indie ones, and I very happily forked over cash for beer, artisan soda, popcorn, and Salt & Straw ice cream. But there’s NO way I was gonna send off Gene Wilder with house brand chocolate. Nope, the original and best Mr. Wonka deserved no less than imported fair-trade Belgian goodness (with its sole US location in Portland, natch).

Here’s to Mr. Wilder and Mr. Dahl! With humble thanks for chocolate-filled dreams.

 

So I’m a week late on this, BUT since all my ‘Toban and ‘Sotan friends just put their preciouses on the school bus today, I figure it’s still timely. My contribution to the back-to-school-pic barrage:

(How come you can actually see the kids in everyone else’s pics instead of an overwhelming amount of gray siding? Oh yeah…cuz I’m behind the camera on these ones….)

One thing my home peeps don’t have yet is a whole week’s worth of first impressions. First day is too scary and overwhelming to really form an opinion, but one week? Eh, you can get a pretty good sense of how the year will go.

And oooo, my spidey senses are tingling on this one! I think it’s gonna be a good year!

The Girl has classes she LOVES. She is a TA in metalshop (LOL) and Biology (double LOL) and is already coming home with tales of schooling the youngsters in sharp object safety. She also has English (she had to read Unbroken over the summer, so I have high hopes for the group discussion), Chemistry, Mindfulness and Yoga (oh Portland!), Geometry, and History. A bunch of it is stuff she covered in Minnesota (#Edinaacademicinsanityftw) so she’s off to a nice, easy start.

The Boy is equally well-positioned. He informed me that now that he is in 8th grade, he is actually going to try (since, apparently, marks count starting in freshman year, so he wants to get a year’s practice in). Fine by me! He’s got the usual roster of Math, English, Science, History, and Woodshop. Oh and choir! Oh I *do* love choir concerts!!

Both kids have slid pretty much effortlessly back into the school routine. “Pretty much” because we had our standard first-week meltdowns last week, but that’s par for the course. It also may have been somewhat effortless because I let them skip school on Friday, so they didn’t actually get a full week.

(I know! Bad parent! But my BFF cousin and her daughters came into town on Thursday and the first words out of those dang kids’ mouths was “can The Girl and The Boy skip school tomorrow? PLEEEEEEEEEASE.” I am no match for second-cousin-once-removed pleas.)

So, we’ve had a total of five days and each one has been 5/5. Onwards, friends!

This right here, ladies and gentlemen, is love:

The Husband cleans the kitchen every night (swoon). But even better than wiped countertops and a running dishwasher is how he ALWAYS sets the coffeemaker for the next morning.

He knows I can’t function before the first half pot. And he even asks “do you have your six a.m. meeting tomorrow?” to make sure he sets the timer so it’s ready for me to grab as I stumble my way downstairs and try to remember the call-in code.

(On non-meeting mornings, sometimes he even brings that first cup to me in bed so I can caffeinate up while I’m still cozy.)

Love, I tell you.

Aaaaaand we’re done. Summer’s over. The chrysanthemums have replaced the tomato seedlings at the grocery store, the forecast maybe possibly has rain in it, and – most telling of all – school starts tomorrow!

(Are y’all post-Labor Day starters? Maybe this isn’t even on your radar yet. Maybe you’re still in swimsuits and sunscreen and watermelon mode….)

We’re ready. It’s been a fantastic summer, but we’re all looking forward to the return to routine that school brings. Our “up-till-midnight-sleep-till-noon” experiment has worked out quite nicely. Everybody got rested and relaxed and even a little bit bored (which is exactly how you want to end the summer).

And before I post back-to-school pics, figured I’d give you a taste of what the rest of summer looked like over here.

My parents came for a visit and a boatload of relatives joined them, so we had some super awesome family fun time. I got to shell peas using Aunt Mavis’s patented “bowl method” and the boys did farm-type work. (Literally “the boys” – anyone with an AARP/CARP card helped with the hard work of “supervising.”)

Lots of fun times with hoverboards and games and cousins for the younger set, too.

The Girl’s Minnesota BFF came for a visit and we did the Portland grand tour.

We (that is, the family member with a data plan, i.e. The Husband) got into Pokemon Go and there were all sorts of Daddy/Daughter hunting trips.

On the musical front, we went to see Weird Al Yankovic at Edgefield. Man, that guy hasn’t changed in 20 years.

In other “hasn’t changed” news, The Husband and I were also treated to some VIP tickets to see Jackson Browne. That crowd definitely skewed AARP/CARP, but I’m always up for some free food and drinks (AND my own seat *with* a table) and some good ol’ Running on Empty.

We also did fun outdoorsy-type stuff (after I recovered from whitewater rafting). We went camping (in a FOR REAL tent) with friends from church (FOR REAL friends) at Fort Stevens National Park. Since “camping” for me has always meant Falcon Lake, it felt very strange to pitch a tent a few minutes from the OCEAN.

But there were still trails and foresty-type excursions to make it feel like legit camping.

Also jokes. (I’m always shocked to realize that I’m in cougar territory. I mean, yeah, I guess technically, but having entirely skipped the whole dating scene in my youth, I can’t even conceptualize what a Round Two would look like. Honestly, these days if I’m in a bar by myself, it’s with a book in my hand while I wait for The Husband to return from the bathroom).

A major summer highlight was definitely going to see my friend D.L. Mayfield do a reading at Powell’s. My friend. Reading. Powell’s. Unbelievable. (Also unbelievable is her book. Buy it. It’s amazing and intense and funny and prophetic and raw and real.)

And a late-breaking highlight (this happened just yesterday!) was The Husband’s first solo gliding flight! He’s been working hard at learning how to fly gliders all summer and he wants to get his license before winter comes. He’s done a ton of flights with his instructor, but yesterday was his first time all by himself! (FYI – there are life insurance policies without an aviation exclusion. Just in case you were wondering.)

I feel like we did right by our first Oregon summer. Lots of exploring and adventure but also lots of downtime to hang out with family and friends and to enjoy good food and drink. Which is basically Oregon’s motto, so I think we fit right in.