I must say, I do enjoy a snow day. Especially one that I can enjoy from the comforts of my couch. T couldn’t commute in to work, so he was home and it was a nice little day at home. I build a roaring fire and we had a nice glass of wine in front of it.

Even the creatures relaxed in front of the fire:

On Thursday, it was supposed to start raining, so I was looking forward to the snow departing. Unfortunately, it decided to snow all day long instead. By this point, I was ready for the snow to depart so I wouldn’t have to work from home for a fourth day in a row. I was getting major cabin fever. I decided to walk down to the gym, only to have them close it early (right after I’d changed into running clothes and walked out of the locker room. Jerks!)

By Friday, I was completely over the snow and being stuck in my apartment. Work productivity plummeted and I amused myself by taking pictures of the birds in the tree in front of my house with my phone:

I think Wally summed up my feelings of Snow Day #3 far better than words can express:

At least it rained all day Friday, melting most of the snow on the road, so T and I were able to flee the house for a movie. It was nice to get out of the house and restore a little sanity. I need all the help I can get…

M headed out first, so that she could run an easier pace for the first part of the run. I stretched and headed out after her, a little later than I’d meant to. Once I started moving, the cold stopped being an issue and I settled in for a long day of running. It started to drizzle about half an hour in, which wasn’t so great but I figured it would stop eventually. There were tons of mountain bikers out on the path for some reason, so there was a “Well, we’re all in this together” sort of vibe. I saw M up ahead in the distance and figured I’d catch up to her somewhere between the 8 and 10 mile mark. I actually caught up to her just after she hit the turnaround point and made a “WTF” gesture with my arms at the rain and said “Dude!” which made her laugh. (Again, little did I know that I’d miss that soggy drizzle… )

Half a mile later, the hail started and it actually just made me laugh out loud. With nine and half miles to get back to the car, it was just ridiculous. The hail got harder and there was nothing to do but keep running. I kept picturing a “Bad-ass meter” and the needle was moving into the red. Then the snow started to fall. Hard. It was starting to stick to the path and my already wet shoes became soaked. My poor wet gloves were getting covered in snow as were the fronts of my legs. M must have hit the afterburners after I’d seen her because she was no where to be seen. (At this point the needle on the bad-ass meter broke off and we had to use the “Crazy person meter”.)

There was nothing to be done but keep running. I reached a sort of equilibrium where the effort of running kept me from being too cold. Although I did start to wonder just how long one could run with soaking wet hands and feet in heavy snow before frostbite was a concern. Finally, somewhere around the 13 mile mark, M was waiting under an overpass for me, wanting to know what I thought we should do and with the brilliant idea of calling a cab. Luckily, we were pretty close to a brewery/restaurant, so we headed for that. (Which also turned out to be where the mountain bike event was as well.)

It took us quite a while to stop violently shivering. We ordered coffee and soup which I wanted to pour over my hands. While we waited for our cab, we camped out next to their roaring fireplace.

The fire helped warm us up a lot, but we were still soaking wet. In the cab on the way back to the car, there was still tons of snow falling, but it stopped by the time we got there. Thankfully, the roads up by the car were totally fine and by the time we got back to Ballard the sun was actually shining. (This didn’t help my mood too much.) I was feeling very upset about our unsuccessful 20 miler and spent the rest of the day sulking in the tub and then taking a nap, instead of being industrious like M and running the last 7 miles of it. (Good job, M!)

The next morning, I headed out to finish up my run. It had been snowing a little bit when I left the house and of course it started snowing harder when I actually started running. Luckily, I was wearing warmer clothes that were dry, which made a huge difference. Here’s what the path looked like as I started the run:

And here’s what it looked like three miles later:

I’d originally planned to run 10 miles, but that would have necessitated another two miles from this point, so I decided that 8 miles was plenty. Before heading back, I snapped a quick self-portrait:

So, apparently I was destined to run the rest of that 20 miler in the snow, no matter what. I know that in the great scheme of training, missing one 20 miler isn’t the end of the world. But it does make me feel a bit more unsettled in my preparation than I had before, so hopefully we’ll be able to get through the next month without any more major setbacks.

Susan was in town visiting, so we wanted to start our run from a spot where she’d have some place to hang out and entertain herself while we ran for hours and hours. We opted to drive to Marymoor park on the east side of the lake and run from there. All of us run slightly different paces, so we staggered our start times slightly. T passed me at mile four and I caught M around mile 5. Initially, she was planning to stop to use a restroom, so I kept going but then she caught up to me and we spent the rest of the run chatting, which made for a much less boring endeavor. It was so nice to have company as we gutted out the latter miles. Not to mention someone to giggle with about this graffiti at the restroom where we stopped around mile 10:

(Those darn kids… )

The last mile felt like forever, but we made it. The staggering walk to the car and the ensuing comedy routine of changing out of our run shoes was hilarious. The poor man across the parking lot must have thought we were crazy.

J was nice enough to cook us all dinner and M was nice enough to share her couch with us. (I’m also happy to welcome her to the compression garments club. Woo!):

And dinner was delicious:

It was a low-key, but very enjoyable way to ring  in the new year, even if we didn’t quite make it to midnight. Oh well, happy new year everyone!

My mom had put up a pretty tree:

And had a nice menu planned with some tasty appetizers, which were very popular:

and a spinach quiche (it was less eggy than a typical quiche, so I’d describe it more like a spinach pie… )

And a cranberry pie for dessert. (I’d never heard of a cranberry pie, apparently it was something my maternal grandmother used to make.)

Combine that with some wine and it was shaping up to be quite a nice holiday. Christmas morning was filled with gifts:

And even some whimsical hats (they say bah humbug on them):

I’d prepped a baked caramel french toast the night before, which came out really well:

Luckily, we had a ten mile tempo run on our training plan to burn some of it off. Even with the rain that started the minute we started running, it was actually a really enjoyable run. There were a surprising number of other runners out and everyone was in a cheery mood. Not a bad way to spend Christmas, all things considered.

I had it made into a rubber stamp to print onto paper coffee bags that we ordered. (God bless the internet!)

We doubled our coffee-roasting capabilities by buying another air-popper and T spent a few evenings roasting away. My other big project was inspired by something I’d seen on a blog and wanted to try, some felt play food for Heidi’s twins. I inherited my mother’s sewing machine, but must confess that I’m not much of a seamstress. It’s use tends to come when I get these crafty flights of fancy and usually what I picture in my head is a far cry from what actually gets produced. This time, the project came out just like I imagined it. I made a breakfast series:

And lunch (PB&J and a turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and two kinds of cheese):

Here are all of the pieces:

It was such a fun project that I think came out really well. I hope the twins enjoy playing with them as much as I enjoyed making them. And who knows, maybe I’ll have to open an etsy shop or something…

(We got him a softer cone than the hard plastic ones because he has a tendency to bash them into door frames until they break.) The problem is that the cone didn’t really prevent him from licking the toenail, which kept it from healing. And earned him another trip to the vet and more time with the cone. He’s very adaptable though, he could even beg for toilet paper tubes:

Eventually, we started putting a sock on that foot to help protect the toe from him and hopefully let it heal faster. Meanwhile, with the possibility of T starting a job in Austin, we scheduled Smokey Joe for some work that the vet had recommended: a dental cleaning and removal of some fatty lumps. Which meant a transfer of the cone of shame (and a very nice Christmas for our vet… )

And a new nickname for Smokey Joe a.k.a. “Stitch Face” or “Jigsaw”:

Meanwhile, Wally has his own indignities to suffer:

Both boys are well on their way to recovery now. I wish I could say the same for my checkbook… ;-P

As you might expect, I went through a range of emotions from the “Are you f-ing kidding me? That’s ridiculous!” to “Well, it’s an adventure. Let’s see what happens next.” For those who might not know T’s and my history (or want a refresher), we started our marriage with about 15 days together before he boarded a plane to Alaska to stage manage dinner theatre for six months and I headed down to California to assistant direct for a Shakespeare festival. We’ve moved approximately eight times over the course of our 14 and a half years of marriage. So, the prospect of moving to a city I’ve never visited in a state that I’ve only seen the inside of one of it’s airports wasn’t as daunting as it might be to other folks. The timeline was a bit worrisome, but I figured we’d work it out.

I spent the pre-interview week trying to adopt a Zen attitude toward the whole thing while simultaneously making a list of details that would need to be handled. Pretty much every time a panicked thought entered my head (“What about that pile of Craigslist stuff in the closet?! We need to deal with that!”) I’d jot it into my Google spreadsheet. I would also find myself thinking of all of the things I was going to miss if we left Seattle. When I drove T to the airport on Sunday for his interview, I honestly didn’t know which result I was hoping for. I felt completely neutral, with good sides and bad sides of either option balancing each other out.

As I waited to hear news, I realized how rare these moments where your life is about to completely and totally change have become. When I was in my 20′s those moments were commonplace. I actively sought them out and thrived on the chaos and tumult that resulted. (In fact, back in 1995, I moved to Seattle for an internship, having never set foot in the city before my interview. I had a weekend to find a place to live on my $100/week salary.) But over the years, things have definitely settled down and I thought I was okay with that trend.

So, when T called yesterday to say he didn’t get the job, I was surprised at how disappointed I was. Without even being fully conscious of it, I’d been really looking forward to having another crazy adventure. To having to start from scratch someplace new. I know that some of this is because I’ve forgotten the downsides of all of those things, the loneliness before you meet anybody. The uncertainty of finding a new job/finding a way to do my current job remotely. The fact that T would be traveling a ton in that job and I would spend a bunch of time alone in a strange city where I don’t know anyone.

There’s a similar design job on the horizon here in Seattle. I’m hoping that all of the prep for this interview will give T an advantage in applying for that one. (Plus it’s on his home turf, which helps.) But I’m also trying to find ways to rejuvenate our lives here. In a few months, we’ll be looking to move to a new place in town, which will help. I’m brainstorming some ways to interject some adventure into our lives and figure out why everything feels so stagnant right now. (Maybe it’s that mid-life crisis I’ve been hearing about… ) In the meantime, I’m focusing on all of the things I would have missed if we had moved. Which is a pretty good mind-set to carry into the holidays.

After purchasing our tickets, we had some time to kill. Apparently, the admission folks don’t really care if folks wander in to the museum early on a random Friday afternoon because we were able to walk right in. There was an insect exhibit in the same section of the museum where the Imax is, so we perused that. (The funny part was that sections of this were a big featured exhibit the last time I was at the science center back in the mid-90′s. I guess they like to recycle things at the Science Center.) They had a butterfly atrium that was new and very cool:

The movie was surprisingly entertaining (I had only seen the first two and found neither particularly impressive) and the outing was much more fun than a typical office party.

First stop on the agenda was a place called Camp 18, which is a former lumber mill turned restaurant.

There were tons of carved wooden sculptures outside, including this cute bear:

Erik posed with his long lost twin:

(He’s the one on the left… ;-P) And here’s one of my parents posing with some wooden friends:

Inside, there were more fun decorative touches:

And more fun things in the back:

After a hefty brunch, it was back into the car to go to Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach. Sadly, it had clouded up on the coast (we’d left Portland under a pretty blue sky.) but I think that the Oregon Coast is pretty in the fog.

The tide was out, so we could walk quite close to the big rock formations:

There were some tide pools in the rocks at the base, but I lacked the footwear and the inclination to hike out to them. It was fun taking Hipstamatic pics of the coast however:

And pictures of various family members. Here’s Nerissa:

I love this picture of my mom and I:

Me and the boy:

Then it was back into the car for a long drive home. All told, T & I spent about eight hours in the car. (Ugh.) The rest of the evening was spent in a battle of the iPads between my brother and mom in a Words With Friends battle royale:

As always with family gatherings, it was a complicated weekend. At times, I felt like an intrusion, getting in the way of my mom’s time with Erik. Other times, it was fine. I think it’s just the nature of being around family. The dynamics have developed over so many years and are layered and complex. I know we’re hardly unique in this, all families have their issues. Ours has been dealt some pretty major blows, so I suppose I should be happy we’re still speaking at all. But there are times when I wish we were closer to that mythical ideal we all long for this time of year.

We were also experimenting with a new turkey technique, where you stuff the cavity of the turkey with coffee beans. (Courtesy of Seattle celebrity chef Tom Douglas.) My before picture was a little gross, so here’s T posing with the end result:

The coffee beans lent the turkey a smokey quality. The bacon grease smeared at the bottom of the pan plus the onions and turkey drippings made an amazing gravy. J & M came over in the afternoon to hang out and play a little pre-dinner Rock Band. I even set a pretty table for us, complete with fancy cloth napkin folding (a hold-over from T’s days of working in restaurants.) I also busted out my parents wedding “silver” (actually pewter), which I inherited when they upgraded to new stuff several years ago.

We ended the evening with a viewing of a bootleg Twilight movie accompanied by lots of wine and yelling at the tv. (Those movies are so terrible! But so fun to mock while drinking wine on the couch.) We were up way too late considering that we had to hit the road early tomorrow morning for a drive down to Portland, but it was worth it.