Here comes the...

Well!

Nearly 10 years from the time that Breakup Babe was born on a sad, sweaty summer day, she (I) got engaged.

Yes, moi. Engaged to be married!

I am finally wearing that diamond ring that Breakup Babe so longed for in her sexy little struggle, or at least claimed she did. Personally I think she really enjoyed her sl*tty phase, knowing (if not truly believing) that she might one day settle down.

I'm a little terrified, to tell you the truth. I know it won't be that different from the Domestic Bliss (TM) that Dave and I live in currently with Snuffy the spirited senior pug in our 650-square foot condo with only one bathroom. The Domestic Bliss (TM) that we have been enjoying for oh, almost four years now.

We pretty much are married except that I don't yet enjoy the benefits of Dave's killer health insurance and haven't yet received loads of fancy cookware or gone out on the town wearing a veil and waving a dildo. (Wait, is that what people do at bachelorette parties? I've never actually been to one.)

Still I'm too terrified to talk about actual marriage. So let's talk about WEDDINGS! Now that's a subject I can get behind!

Wedding Fever!
Our purported plan is to get married while the weather is still nice enough to tie the knot OUTDOORS and while mom is still healthy enough to enjoy it.

And an outdoor wedding in this part of the world limits you to the second half of July, August, and September.

WHICH IS NOT VERY FAR AWAY!

So far, here's what I've done in preparation:

• Read the terrifying and hilarious book, One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding
• Look at four locations:
• Cama Beach State Park/Camano Island State Park
• Camano Island Inn
• Golden Gardens Bathouse
• Skansonia Ferry 
• Made a plan to go see these places:
• Jenne Farm, Whidbey Island
• Admiralty Head Lighthouse, Whidbey Island
• Set up a cake tasting here:
• New Renaissance Cakes

I loved Cama Beach and Camano Island State Parks (both on Camano Island). Cama Beach has quaint, historic waterfront cabins on the beach and a gorgeous new hall with fantastic views that's perfect for a reception. And adjacent Camano Island State Park has some idyllic spots overlooking the water for a ceremony.

However I'm not sure Camano Island is gonna work out for boring reasons mainly having to do with stuff already being booked except for Sunday nights and how I don't want to have a wedding on Sunday, blah blah.

All right I'm talked out. I'm sure you'll hear more about this in the days to come.

You might also witness some brainstorming about how I can write a sequel to BreakupBabe that features her older, wiser, engaged self yet where she is still neurotic and impulsive enough to create *conflict* and *crazy adventures*!

Cranberry Chicken revival

Last night I made a chicken dish of my grandmother's. She made it for us all the time when we were kids. For a while it was my favorite dish of all.

When my seventh grade class was polled about our favorite foods, all the other students said "pizza."

I, on the other hand, would say "Cranberry Chicken!"

The recipe is a little...anacronistic.  Here's what the famous cranberry sauce consists of:

-1 envelope dried onion soup
-1 can cranberry sauce
-1 bottle French dressing 

You mix all those ingredients, then throw it on top of some chicken breasts and bake it for two hours (At 325, in case you were wondering - one hour covered, one hour uncovered). Then you throw a whole bunch of bow-tie noodles into the sauce when it's all done.  

It did taste just like Bubby used to make it. And for two hours my kitchen smelled just like ours used to when she cooked for our family and took care of my sister and me (as she often did). Those smells brought back good memories.  

But my modern-day palate has gotten a little jaded. The dish tasted good, but a definite queasiness lingered after I ate it.  So I don't think I'll be making it again.  (Sorry, bubby).

Her brisket recipe, however, is a classic. It's delicious, and similarly 1950s-ish yet not quite so...um...French dressing-y.  I'll be sure to share that recipe in the future, as the brisket time of year approaches.

Getting Religion in the Goat Rocks Wilderness

Ugh. I have just moved. That's right, moved. Back to the condo in Queen Anne from whence I came.

I won't bore you with the details of why we moved out of our lovely Greenlake rental back to the condo I own, which is a great size for one person (and one small dog). We'll just have to see if Dave and I can apply the living-together skills we learned in the two-bedroom house with the huge-ass basement to the 650-square foot one bedroom condo with one tiny storage locker.

Luckily, nothing was thrown during this move. (See the previous blog entry for details on last year's throwing incident). Or not really, anyway. Late last week I did throw an ear of corn. And while it wasn't directly move-related I think it the fit of pique in which I threw it (oh the shame!) was related to stress brought on by the move.

Anyway, moving on. (Get it? MOVING on?) Last weekend, because of course, I had no PACKING to do or anything, I took a backpacking trip to the Goat Rocks Wilderness area south of Mount Rainier. And Oh! My! It was a high-altitude world filled with wildflower-washed meadows.

I've posted a few of my (amateurish) pictures here for your enjoyment. Let's just say that going to the mountains is never a mistake, even if you're up to your eyeballs in stressful sh*t to do. Especially this little corner of the Cascades. Unless, of course, you make get lost, die of hypothermia, or fall off a cliff.

xo

Rebecca

Return from Vacation Alive - Check!

I am back from a week of paddling in the Canadian wild! Tan, rested, raring to go. We kayaked for five days in 80-degree weather: lounging on white sand beaches, paddling protected aqua waters, drinking red wine from our beachfront campsites while watching the sun go down.

Oh, there was mouse poop and banana slugs and snakes, but compared to last summer's Alaskan grizzlies, they didn't disturb me at all. Starfish and sea lions were our main animal companions on this sun-dazzled journey in the Broken Group Islands off west Vancouver Island.

We did, however, have on exciting wildlife encounter. Here's a snippet from an article I'm writing about it; you'll just have to wait until it gets published to read it all! (And if you haven't ready my article about last year's Alaska paddle, you can download it in PDF format here).

I’d just put down my book and pulled my sleeping bag around me when a loud noise broke the silence of our coastal campsite. Crash! Snort!Indeterminate rustlings!

“What the--?” Dave sat up straight. He peered out into the night through the door of our tent but his headlamp didn’t make a dent in the blackness. My mind groped at possibilities. My heart launched into a rock and roll beat. Deer? Wolf? Escaped prisoner in a murderous rage? Bear?

Now it's back to the grind (granted my "grind" is rather slow these days) but also to the dreaded MOVE. Yes Dave and I are moving back to my condo in Queen Anne for long, boring reasons I shall not go into.

Just pray for us, that's all I can say. Hope that there is not a repeat of our dramatic meltdown of the last year's move, which involved me topless and sobbing in a heat wave throwing bottles of household cleaner at Dave. (Although if there is a repeat this year, we really hope to catch it on video).

xo, Rebecca

Monday Monday

Hello hello from work-at-home-never-leave-the-house-don't-talk-to-anyone-but-the-dog-land.

Things are peachy keen here! I'm getting supremely buffed by doing the workouts in Kathy Kaehler's Celebrity Workouts: How to Get a Hollywood Body in Just 30 Minutes a Day, which also does not require me to leave the house! OK, maybe "supremely buffed" is an exaggeration. "Slightly worked" might be more apt or "a teeny-tiny bit of defintion which I'm probably imagining" is more likely.

You can be the judge when I don my swimsuit for the Greenlake Open Water Swim next weekend! Oh hell. Maybe I'll do the Greenlake Open Water Swim. You know I have a fear of giant squid, even in freshwater lakes. No wait, that's Li'l Sis! Ha ha. She still manages to be a much better swimmer than than me, even though I beat her in that one impromptu swim race in Hawaii (not that I still gloat about that 10 years later). There are other things to be afraid of in Greenlake, like children's pee and goose poop. So we shall see.

It would actually require me to leave the house and "interface" with other people so I don't know if that will work. I have everything I need at home, like tofu, coffee, an Internet connection, and several Canon cameras circa 1980 that I can't bring myself to get rid of. Plus, of course, Yogi "Classic India Spice" tea. C'mon, buy some! I'll get like two cents if you do!



Just kidding. I get out a lot. I even went to a birthday party and band practice; led a hike at Mt. Rainier National Park, and went to a Mexican restaurant this weekend, where I drank a ridiculously huge margarita. (See, there I am at left in the mountains, fooling an unsuspecting member of the Mountaineers into thinking I am capable of reading a map, etc..)

On this gray Monday, however, it's back to the grind. Just me and the dog doing our celebrity workouts, drinking Classic India Spice tea, and simultaneously being annoyed and fascinated by stupid Twitter. Oh yeah - looking for a job too! (In case the unemployment office asks.)

Snow-o-Rama

This weekend I was not exactly at my sparkling best. For one, I was *supposed* to go backcountry skiing on Saturday. Then I bailed because of "winter storm warnings," etc. And because when I woke up in the middle of the night, rain was falling in Biblical proportions.

These are perfectly good excuses not to go outdoors. But I know myself better than that. I know that if I do not get out in the mountains at least once a week that my outlook on life gets extremely grim.

I secretly hoped everyone else would cancel. That weather would turn them around. That they would arrive at their destination and be so miserable that they gave up in despair.

But this was not the case. They all had fun! While I, on the other hand, stayed home and got increasingly agitated, getting everyone else (dog, boyfriend) increasingly agitated along with me so that a massive fight broke out by 8 p.m.

So I made a choice. The next day I blew off all other responsibilities and went skiing. The weather wasn’t much better. It was snowing the whole time. All the slopes were a big slab waiting to avalanche so we just skied along a road. But, Glory Halleleleujah, I got my exercise and my dose of UV rays and a few mountain views and I was golden.

I stayed toasty dry in my jaunty blue Marmot Oracle jacket (pictured above). I am one of the least gear-savvy outdoor freaks around but I do know this: if your jacket doesn't keep you dry, you're doomed.

This video from British company Webtogs actually taught me a lot about rain shells that I didn't know -- for example, that all these years I've been buying "membrane" jackets as opposed to "coated" jackets - and that Gore-tex is a type of membrane. The cute outdoorsy British dude mentions Berghaus jackets (a Euro brand) as an example of a good membrane jacket but I'll stick with my Marmot, thanks very much!

And I’ll be sure to get out it in next weekend, or else.

Wanna Buy Some Stuff?

I have discovered a great way to ride out the recession AND clean out my basement: sell all my crap on Craigslist! It's absolutely brilliant. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Maybe because there wasn't a recession and I wasn't unemployed and I used to be the kind of person to hold onto stuff I haven't used in 25 years but no longer!

Here's a list of stuff I've recently sold and plan to sell:

An overpriced nightstand I bought with my icky ex-boyfriend who had tons of money and in fact I think he paid for it and guess what, I made the $85 profit!

A bike trailer I haven't used in nine years

Pots that haven't seen a plant in them since the new millenium

The flute that last saw tongue action in the 80s

My "classic" Canon cameras

Etc etc.

Of course it would help if I could actually find my flute but I'm sure it's down there somewhere with all the letters from the 80s that I'll probably never read again and my journals from 7th grade that I'm keeping because they'll definitely be worth tons of money someday. Unless I get REALLY broke in which case I'll try to sell them to unsuspecting sucker as collectible literary memorabilia, haha.

xo
Rebecca

Basket-tastic Household

After sleeping in to an obscene hour today and and making several feeble attempts to be productive, I give up. I simply have no interest in any of the ten million projects I should be working on.

I'm just too worn out after a weekend of camping and hiking with some friends of mine who are frighteningly fit and formidable. After bumbling along in their wake for two days on ice and snow-covered trails, I need a rest! Apparently my brain does too, because it simply won't function.

The North Cascades scenery was stunning - as you can see-- despite much of the fall foliage being covered in an early dump of snow. And it was especially soothing, while freezing my a** off in the tent on Saturday night, to be lulled to sleep by the sound of hunters in the next campsite blasting country music and getting increasingly drunk.

I'm usually the one in any campground scenario to tell people to shut the f*ck up, but these guys, had really big guns. So I kept my trap shut, cinched the sleeping bag as tight around my balaclava-encased head as it would go, broke out the handwarmers, and eventually fell asleep. (Although the old Breakup Babe part of me briefly contemplated going over and joining the party. You know, in the spirit of bipartisanship, with the goal of eventually getting them to vote for Obama).

Harmony has returned to my household - in case you were worried because of last week's melodramatic post. Now I'm ready to share my latest home-decorating fetish with you. Are you ready?

Baskets! That's right. I have "discovered" the art of decorating with baskets and oh, boy, my house has never looked better. How did I fail to discover them before? Not only are they attractive and cheap, they let you organize things without really organizing them.

A little mess here? Throw it in a basket A little mess there? Throw it another (matching!) basket! Soon you've got one organized and delightfully Cost-Plussy household. I now have no less than eight baskets in my new house and I don't intend to stop anytime soon.

So there.

Me and Blogger -- Headed to Couples Therapy

Sigh.

Look how early I'm posting today. You can always tell I've had a bad night if I'm posting before 8 a.m. in the morning.

You know, I wish I could blog like in the old days. If I could, I would tell all: from how sexy my boyfriend is when he's playing the guitar to how we got in a stupid fight about (insert mundane household item here) last night that has extended into the wee hours of this rain-lashed morning.

I would have delved more deeply into the relationship dynamics that played out in Alaska. What happened, exactly, as we piloted a kayak over too-big waves and got stranded on beaches that we couldn't get off? Who took charge? Who panicked? Who spotted the first grizzly (And the second? And who was ready to pack the kayak up and flee and who insisted we stand our ground?)

Hell, I would tell you the most private details of our s*x life if I could. Because God knows, I don't have anyone to talk to about that now my best girlfriends have dispersed to far-flung corners of the world.

I would share our thoughts on having kids and adoption (who's pro, who's con?) and that I think he would be great dad but that the thought of kids still terrifies me. I would talk about how my niece gets a googly, lovestruck look in her eyes every time he appears.

I might even talk about how I saw my most recent ex-boyfriend last week for the first time since our breakup more than 2 years ago and how bittersweet (but mostly sweet) that was.

I would talk about how I worry I'm emotionally shut down and might never be able to open up except to people I can't trust because they can't hurt me as much. But then I might say how that's stupid psychobabble and I should just shut the f*ck up.

But no. I don't talk about those things anymore. And, therefore, I don't really blog anymore, because nothing engaged me like talking about love and sex and dating and boys.

There I was, talking to a blogging class at Write on the Sound yesterday, telling them how the #1 thing they needed for a successful blog was PASSION.

And here I am, blogging day after day without passion anymore.

Me and Blogger need to go into some serious therapy.