the sound of settling…in.

“Sometimes the only available transportation is a leap of faith.” 

The settling in has begun or maybe the slowing of my wings in my current leap of faith in moving to Portland.  The initial craziness of being in a new city, new school and new home has worn off a bit and I’ve begun to look for ways to make this new home, comfortable and cozy.  It helps to get a little routine in the mix to help with adjustments. Last week, I was all over the place, staying up til two, waking up at 6:30, eating lunch at 4pm, chasing preschoolers around the playground, working out at 10, going to class til 9:30pm, happy hours here, concerts there. It’s been a little wild.

Mel and I have been exploring the best we can; sometimes we’re successful, other times…not. We are trying to find the best coffee shop, cozy, fair trade, quality…still looking. We walked all around yesterday in the POURING RAIN in search of Voodoo Donuts, which we did in fact find. It’s a little hole in the wall. They have a wide variety of donuts including captain crunch and cocoa puff topped rounds, an intense chocolate/peanut butter/oreo topped one, called “Old Dirty Bastard” which we had to have, we steered clear of the “Tex-ass” donut in the corner. The guy serving us, in a pink tee, dangly earrings and flowery belt was friendly enough to name each donut and it’s ingredients on the spinning platters. We devoured the taste explosion and chatted about the huge autographed picture of Rod Stewart eyeing us above the door. This was a win compared to our quick Stumptown experience, which was chilly, spendy but tasty.

We’ve surprised ourselves with our handiwork around the house though. Mel effectively painted a small dresser a lovely wine color on our back porch in roughly three to four days and we managed to put together my desk with absolutely no directions to go off. We’re feeling pretty dang good about our abilities J 

Some highlights

-Hanging our African textiles in the hallway…this resulted in at least fifteen minutes of pure laughter for Mel and I. Laughter at our inability to hang a bamboo pole on the wall, laughter at each other, at Mel’s man laugh-straight from the gut-gets me every time. We could hardly breathe.

-Also, we have a pet bear at the entry of our building, which was the result of carrying too many bags of groceries that the olive oil bottle managed to creep up and out of the bag and crashed to the pavement, spilling the ENTIRE BOTTLE of oil ALL OVER THE SIDEWALK. Our fix was wiping the oil into the crevices with a paper towel. It is now a dark oily spot on the ground that resembles a large bear about to attack.

-We made cookies for our ‘friend’ Spencer upstairs. We left them outside his door because he wasn’t home. Three days later, they were still there. We concluded that either he hasn’t been home or he isn’t really our friend…

-My cousin Erin is engaged, and I am so excited for her!