Holy Spurs On My Moments

Hooray!! I am in Portland, on the first spur-of-the-moment vacation of my life, visiting my friend Lacey. Wonderful Quena arrives tomorrow night, too! A girls’ week, and a favorite-people week, and a travel for fun week. Being around incredible, loving and happy people is a very good thing, I think I might do well to get used to it and do it more often.
The morning started out as a reprisal of last weeks theme – oversleeping, this time both me AND my dad. I nearly missed my flight by being late and then getting thoroughly unpacked in a double-security screening, but made it onto the plan just as they were swinging the door shut – only to then sit in the runway and taxi back to have a malfunctioning radio system repaired (from the pilot: “No need to worry folks, it wasn’t like it was something that would have prevented us from landing safely or flying into another plane, nothing like that, just a routine problem”…!!). As soon as I called Lacey to tell her I’d be late, I fell promptly asleep (I’d stayed up till 3:30 unpacking from house-sitting and moving and repacking for the trip), and stayed that way till we landed. Yay for unexpected maintenance and impromptu nap opportunities!
I found Lacey at PDX after a bit of wandering around in the wrong directions, and we took the MAX into downtown and walked through lovely tree-lined Park Avenue which I remembered more vividly than expected from childhood visits up here. Lacey’s charming flat is in a student housing complex, and just the perfect size; I’m reminded again how much space I’d really need to feel at home, and how much I’m looking forward to student housing of my own in the hopefully not-too-distant future! I noticed by noonish that time had slowed waaaaay down, that I was more relaxed and happy than I’d been in a long time, and just basked in that – what an incredible thing!
It was Lacey’s friend Paul’s birthday, and we decided to make a Vegan Birthday Dinner-Feast (intentional caps), complete with spice cake from a recipe that I’ve had swimming around in my head but hadn’t fleshed out all the way. In other words, experimentation, my very favorite thing to do with a kitchen! So we headed out to shop, and I got a ground-level taste of how incredibly low-key and well-laid-out Portland is. We made a brief detour into Powells (DANGER WILL ROBINSON), a stocking-up at Whole Foods, and then back to drop off groceries and walk to Lacey’s community garden plot, which is flourishing beautifully.
The feast was prepared and savored and enjoyed, and at some point i'll have to post the menu... I am just so full, not of food but of peace, love, kinship, and feeling immersed in people and surroundings I both understand and am recognized as my true self by. A new, and curious, and blessed feeling. I am looking forward to all that this week holds for us.