Earth tilting! House warming! Jesus' birth celebrated!

What were we thinking when we gave away most of our Christmas decorations last spring?  That's a question that came to mind when I opened our "Christmas decorations" box last weekend and found...not much.  Yes, we had brought the 30 year old string of colored lights for the tree, a few unique tree ornaments given to us by friends...the red cloth that covers the tree stand...but the frenzy of culling our possessions in preparation for the move must have whipped us into thinking that we didn't need the white dove that sits on the top of our Christmas tree.  Or the string of lights that we put across the front of the house.  Or the tinsel swag that we wrap around the tree.    Did we think that Christmas hadn't been invented yet in our future new home in the far northwest corner of the US?

Besides buying some new Christmas decorations, we have, indeed, needed to create new traditions for this Christmas season.  We invited two people who are also newcomers to Bellingham over for dinner at our house.  We invited two of our new neighbors in for Christmas cookies and cider.  Both get togethers were a way to fill in the HUGE gap we created by leaving our best friends behind in Kentucky.  And to fill in those pre-Christmas days where, when Lynne's mother was alive, we would have been cleaning house, wrapping presents and preparing for family, we went down to Seattle as a mutual Christmas present.  We stayed overnight at the Queen Ann Inn, ate out twice, went to the Wing Luke Asian Museum, took in the Body exhibit, saw a Langston Hughes play called “Black Nativity”, rode on the monorail, went to Pike Place market and walked around downtown amidst the Christmas shoppers and lights.  The top picture is of Macy's in downtown Seattle with a big star on the front.  The picture of the Dungeness crabs for sale shows you what we could have, but did not send you this year for Christmas.  This next picture is of Lynne buying one Taylor Gold pear for $2.75 at the Pike Place Market.

Ironically, we've been singing more Christmas carols than I have for years at our Unitarian church, which even had a children's pageant which put a positive spin on the "no room at the inn" chapter of the nativity story.  This version portrayed Joseph and Mary ending up in the stable after the thoughtful innkeeper offered it as a desirable alternative to the noisy inn. Most of our neighbors have Christmas lights of some form on their houses.  Our across the street neighbors are Jehovah Witnesses who do not participate in Christmas because of its close ties to the pagan holiday of Saturnalia, the raucaus Roman midwinter celebration.  I like being reminded to re-think the Christmas tradition, which does feel like a mixture of pagan and Christian elements.  This year the Solstice, just 4 days before Christmas, took on special meaning, as it marks the day when the earth starts tilting and traveling back toward the sun, and our days up here start to get longer.  And to round out all these thoughts, Langston Hughes reminded me today (through the play "Black Nativity") of the glory of God as seen in music and dance.  I am thankful for all the layers of this season.

So far, no weepy moments...

I am thankful for our warm and cozy home. Lynne and I are thankful for each other and for our pal Winnie.  We are thankful to have work and sufficient income, we are thankful for our families, our friends (old and new), for the quiet, beauty and safety of our new home, for looking out the window and seeing three deer across the street.  I am thankful that through this blog, I can send love and best wishes to many friends and members of my family, and I am always thankful for your emails, calls and letters.  Even when I don't hear from you, I am thankful for your kind thoughts.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!  Love,  Sky

Long nights, the moon

It's not that we are any closer to the moon but these extra hours of dark lend themselves to finding night activities, indoors and out.  I took this picture last night when I was practicing taking pictures of Christmas lights, which I was trying to figure out to be ready to take pictures of the Lighted Boat parade gracing Bellingham Bay Friday and Saturday nights.  The picture of our neighbor's Christmas lights didn't turn out so well but while I was standing out there in the dark with the camera on a tripod, set for taking pictures at night, I looked up.  This is what I saw.

Funny thing is, the sky immediately cleared up after I took this picture.  I went to bed, and when the alarm went off at 5:30 in the morning, I woke up wondering if someone had left the lights on outside.  I went into the living room, where we have a big picture window overlooking Bellingham, and the moon was casting headlights into our house.  It was low on the horizon and illuminated the whole room.

Part 3 was the sunrise, beautiful pink sky wrapping snowy white Mt. Baker, a view that I saw just as I pulled into the parking lot of Vista Middle School (appropriately named) where I am subbing.

So there, you know that I have a long term (3 weeks) sub for a computer teacher at a middle school in Ferndale, WA.  Lynne is working long days for the home health agency, driving around the countryside seeing snow geese in the fields.  I heard birds calling as they flew over our house and the man I was talking to pointed out that they were trumpeter swans.

Yesterday I went to the library and came home with an armful of books for us to read on these long evenings.  I'm disoriented by the early sunset  so I start cooking dinner early, we eat early, I wash the dishes, and then I look at the clock and its only 6 pm.  The sun set at 4:15 pm today and rose at 7:43 a.m.  Besides reading books, we are working on our house.  Lynne is painting the living room a moss green called camouflage, the dining room is acorn yellow, the trim is ivory lace (second color for the trim).  She's also cutting and installing  new wider baseboards in an effort to de-ranch the house..  We've put in new light fixtures and taken down the mirror over the fireplace. We are replaced the plain hollow closet door with a Shaker style wood door, and plan to do more as we get to it and get the money.

Here's a picture of Mt. Rainier as we drove past it on I-5 on our way south. We miss all our friends and family, but had a respite from being strangers in a strange land over Thanksgiving.  Our Kentucky friend, now a Eugene, Oregon resident, Barbara, invited us to share  Thanksgiving with her son and her partner, and our Kentucky friend, now BC resident, Cynthia, joined us there for a day too.   The trip was just what the doctor ordered...I revelled in being with these friends whom I first knew in 1977 in Lexington. (All the marbles rolled to the west.)  Winnie enjoyed having a big family again, if only for a weekend.  We shared Thanksgiving and then carrot cake on Friday night to celebrate my birthday early. Barbara and I danced our heads off in a NIA dance-exercise-music-expression class Saturday morning which was totally fun for a once dancer turned grownup (me).

Now for my other find:  I heard Sarah Jones on NPR and I love her Moth story.  Then I found this TED talk that she did, and I totally recommend it to enrich your winter evening: http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_jones_as_a_one_woman_global_village.html

Love,

Sky, Lynne and Winnie

Everything but marriage

"Looks like we've got everything but marriage," Lynne just said to me, squeezing my shoulder on her way to bed.  Washington state voters did just pass Referendum 71, which reaffirms a law already passed by the state legislature.  This cleverly titled "Everything But Marriage" law expands the domestic partnership laws that were already on the books to give to registered same sex couples and elderly couples all the rights and responsibilities of marriage, except the name.  The results of the election pretty much splits the state, with all the northwest counties (more urban, closer to Seattle) passing it, and all the other counties, everything east of the coastal counties and the southern counties voting it down. In other words, more counties voted it down than passed it, but the areas that passed it have more voters.  The vote was close --52.8% passing.

We laugh about the process, because although election day was Tuesday, the results for this referendum were not announced until today (Friday), and several other races have still not been decided.  That's because most of Washington state has gone to mail-in ballots, which only have to be post-marked by Election Day, not received by Election Day.  Lynne and I received our ballots a few weeks ago, filled them out and then  dropped them off in a box in front of Bellingham's court house (to save postage--that's what we are like.)  The reason that it took three days to announce the winner of the Referendum 71 issue is that the county clerks only count ballots form 9 - 5 pm, then go home for the day, and come back the next day to count some more.  Not only do they not work overtime, they don't work weekends either. Plus, everyday, more ballots are delivered by the US Postal Service. So here's a heads up to the rest of the US--if you are waiting for election results from Washington state to determine a winner, then don't hold your breath!  We two from Kentucky see this slowness as a contradiction to the otherwise progressive and well organized nature of this area. 

The funny thing (not so funny, really) is that the opposition to Referendum 71 was led by two men, one of whom was not even from Washington (he's from Oregon.)  The other, Larry Stickney, is on his third marriage and had a restraining order from his second wife.  So these are the two who are upholding the moral virtue of marriage.  That irony makes it depressing that we only garnered 52% of the popular vote.  Of course, I am not complaining.  I am proud to be living in the first state that has affirmed by popular vote the rights of marriage for same sex couples.

How does the result of Referendum 71, the "Everything But Marriage" amendment, change our lives?  Its reassuring to know that our relationship as a couple is totally supported legally.  We have been "coming out" in Kentucky for 35 years, more and more in recent years.  Lynne was completely out to her co-workers at the VA, and had no problems there.  She was not out to her patients.  In the early years, several of them seemed interested in knowing what her husband did.  She wasn't sure why they were asking, but in retrospect, she thinks they were working their way up to finding out if she were "available."  Those questions about her husband completely stopped once she started wearing our wedding ring on her left hand.  Over my four years of working there, I came completely out to the staff at Seton Catholic School, but not to the parents and students.  I think I broke some new ground with some (if not most) of the teachers there.  That process didn't always flow easily;  even for me, it was hard to overcome the inclination to change the "we" to an "I" in my conversation, just to make the conversation more comfortable. It seemed like some teachers  were comfortable asking about Lynne or hearing my unedited conversation about my life (with her), meaning that some were not.  We were out to our neighbors; again, I think we were breaking new ground for some of them.  We were out at our churches.  We were out to our veterinarian's office, to our medical providers, and to most (but not all) of our house remodeling craftspeople.  I know the guy who Lynne hired to replace the screens on the back porch was surprised when I came home from work.  He asked me, "Do you live here?" 

So, how does Referendum 71 change our lives?  I guess its mostly an affirmation that all the outness that we have continued to experience has a legal basis, and can't be taken away if the social or political climate changes.  I appreciate that the topic has been raised, publically, and state wide.  It has been raised, discussed, debated and approved.  It's like Washington as a state is now "out" in its support for gay people.  We knew already that Washington was a more accepting place, on average, than Kentucky, for example.  Now its not just an acceptance that we can expect from the liberal end of the population, but an acceptance that has a legal basis.  So whether an individual disagrees with us or not, we feel safe in being ourselves everywhere, on all levels.

What's funny is that I witness occasions of gay people here who are not taking full advantage of this climate.  I think the ultimate damper on being "out" as a gay person is still our willingness to risk disapproval.  There are rewards for being one of the gang, and accepting approval for being cute, or freindly, or accomplished.  Its harder to risk our beloved status, although, from my vantage point here, it's the only way to go.  No longer does my face flush when I use the word "partner" when I refer to Lynne, such as when we are negotiating house insurance or establishing Winnie as a patient at a new vet's office.  Having said this word so many times now, to so many strangers who haven't batted an eye, I'm used to it.  The funniest time was in conversation with the man who sold us our radiant heat panels.  He was reflecting on his current happiness, which involved his successful business as well as his recent marriage.  He said, "I just really love having a woman in my life to come home to," and I replied, "Me too."

The substitute's day from hell

Greetings from Sky, Lynne and Winnie!  Fall is in full swing and our lives are approaching normalcy, well, getting closer anyway, sort of like those mathematical asymptotes that you never quite reach, even if you go out to infinity...

Lynne is working home health in Skagit County, south of Bellingham.  She is still going through orientation (longest orientation she has ever had).  We continue to reclaim our house, fixing gutters, getting rid of the burgundy trim color, putting a chimney cap on, and installing a GE Advantium microwave/oven combination over the stove.  Mounting the 75 lb. Advantium five feet off the floor over the stove required ingenuity.  Here we are at our creative best, stacking cookbooks up on the counter, and plying up the Advantium to slip another cookbook in on one side, then the other, until it was raised high enough to be tilted onto its frame.  This is what we do for fun on Friday nights.

The phrase "I never imagined that I'd be..." ran through my mind frequently in the last year, as we planned our move from Kentucky to Washington state.  We were cutting loose from our life as we had known it in  Lexington for 33 years, venturing into a new space. I considered that having opened up this Pandora's box, our story might have a different ending than even we had envisioned.  I had pictured something along such glamorous lines as, "I never imagined that...I'd be living in Hawaii", or "I never imagined that...I'd be on TV."  In fact, life is so much more mundane, and so the sentence ends on a different note. Here I am, thank you God,  living in the the land of bay, sea and mountains, ...working as a substitute teacher.  I never imagined having a career as a substitute.

Thursday, for example, was the substitute day from hell.  First, I was substituting for God, or the closest thing to him in middle school: the basketball coach.  According to the many yellowed newspaper articles taped to the walls, he has dedicated the last 32 years of his life to his students.  His worn and stained teacher chair must have been the original; and the decor of the classroom consisted mostly of hand drawn posters from his students, all tributes to him. Later in the day, I learned that he spends a good portion of every class, like half of it, discussing life with his students. That put me at a distinct disadvantage because I tried to follow his lesson plans, which consisted of a stack of worksheets about the Pythagorean theorem, for four class periods.  Then, fifth (and last) period, I was to discuss marajuana with his Life Skills class.  For that class, he left me a true/false quiz and a video from 1995 to show.

The kids out here have read the same book about torturing substitutes that they read when I was in middle school in New Jersey, "lo these many years."   If you haven't faced a classroom of 25 middle school kids, as a substitute, then you might not understand.  So let me paint the picture.  The students walk in.  They see me and figure out that they have a substitute.  50% of the kids immediately decide that its a day off and start wandering around the room and goofing with their friends.  The rest of the kids go into survival mode, trying to distance themselves from the imminent disaster by such tactics as putting their head on their desk, slumping down in their chairs and staring at the desktop, or asking politely to be excused to go to the bathroom.  Their goal is not to be an object of such diverse activities as spitballs, flying rubber bands, other kids stealing their homework, or worse yet, other kids stealing their seat.  In general, they are avoiding human contact, a true challenge in a 20 by 30 ft room with 27 people in it, only one of whom is an adult. 

The teacher that I was subbing for loved the kids so much that he didn't have a seating chart.  As in, the kids could sit wherever they wanted to, and also as in, I had no reliable way to know their names. Taking attendance is an act of random guessing, as some kids answer twice and some, not at all.  OK, I am facing this class of strangers and I start to review the pythagorean theorem (Do you remember it?  a squared + b squared = c squared, a technique to find the length of any side of a right triangle if you know the length of the other two sides.)  As I go around the room asking them to help me out and leading them through these problems, many of them suddenly can't remember how to multiply, let alone how to square a number.  We haven't even gotten to the part of "what in the world is a square root", or a hypotenuse.  Plus, every time I turned to write something on the board, someone in the back of the class meowed. A group of  3 kids in the front row are functional and are racing  far ahead of me, having done half of the worksheet already. About five kids have never heard of a triangle, and the rest are still searching for a pencil.

I plough on.  I am questioning the class about this Pythagorean theorem stuff, and I'm getting occasional intelligent answers.  We review a few problems, we talk about what a right triangle is, we talk about 90 degree angles, and I give them the rest of the time to complete the worksheet. I circulate the room, cajoling the reluctant to get started, reminding students to turn around to the front, and trying to explain the next problem to a truly lost student. The waiting list to go to the bathroom is getting longer.  The noise level as the students "work together" is getting louder.  The hands on the clock are getting slower.  The class is 65 minutes long, approximately 50 minutes longer than the attention span of most human beings.  My goal is to keep them alive until the bell rings, which it finally does.  The kids file out.  A new batch swarms in.

One truly delightful aspect of subbing is that I can decide not to work if I want to.  I have had some real bouts with loneliness, but I've also found some pearls in the community. I am now part of a really terrific writing group at the Unitarian church.  Unlike the challenges of fitting in to a reasonably literate group at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, where I worried about offending people by writing about my personal life as a lesbian, here I among people who have risked far more and travelled far wider, than I.  Its a great way to connect with writers, and I treasure it.  I am a little daunted by their accomplishments, but its all good for me.  I am also taking a video documentary class, and we are having a delightful, if somewhat bumbling, time creating a short documentary about the Pickford Cinema  The Pickford is Bellingham's version of an art film center, showing the same broad range of films as does the Kentucky Theater, as well as sponsoring local documentary showings, local student film festivals, outdoor cinema, LGBT film festivals, etc. Film is much more of a group project than radio is, which suits me fine.  I am working with some really interesting people, most younger than I am. Through doing interviews, I am meeting the leaders of the film community.  Now this is fun!

We take Winnie to walk on the many trails near our house, and down to a lakeside park that is over the hill from us.  Her phobias keep her from enjoying them completely (sigh), since she is afraid of the spooky woods with all those tall trees and afraid other dogs when they appear in  groups.  If she sees the sign "Dog Off Leash Area", she starts drooling (a sign of stress). Her favorite place so far is the place where we store our RV, which is out in the country and fenced in, so she can run free by herself.  She misses her dog friends Canyon and Mark in Kentucky, but she has made friends with the kids across the street, and a neighbor who gives her dog biscuits every time we stop by.

I do love hearing from you, so thanks for your emails and comments.  I hope your fall is full of apples and red maple leaves!

Love,

Sky

A bargain of a haircut, or was it?

One of the reasons not to abandon your old life and move 3000 miles to the west coast is so that you don't have to find a new hair dresser.  We have both dabbled in keeping our hair trimmed since leaving Lexington, but this week, Lynne took the plunge to try to find the right place.

In search of a truly cheap haircut, Lynne took the advice of one of our young friends and went to a beauty school in downtown Bellingham.. To set the picture, Bellingham, being the home of Western Washington University, close to Seattle and generally part of the edgy NW culture, is full of young people with weird haircuts. This particular beauty school is part of a chain called Toni and Guy's. Here's a link in case you want to find one for yourself: http://toniguyacademy.com/

Lynne had the feeling that this might not have been the right place when she looked around the salon with 30 or more students and all the student stylists and the instructors had colored hair, many tricolored. As in blue, or blue, pink and orange.  Lynne also didn't see any other customers. Most of the students were practicing cutting, rolling or dying the hair of maniquins. The young woman assigned to cut Lynne's hair had blue hair, and a low cut top revealing a full set of tattoes across her chest. I'll call her Student B.

Lynne had a clue about Student B's progress in her studies when Student B didn't know how to put the towel arond her neck, and then when she washed Lynne's hair by using only a smoothing motion as you might smooth a cowlick. Student B commented that she had been in the program for three months, but Lynne had the distinct feeling that this was her first haircut on a living person. It turns out that the Student B's life's dream was to go to Nashville and cut hair for the country music stars.  Apparently this goal was in the distant future, because she sighed and said that she would repeat the 11 month program if she didn't graduate the first time around.  For now, she concentrated on Lynne.

Lynne's sinking feeling grew more desperate as time passed. After an hour and 20 minutes, and frequent trips to consult with the haircutting book and the instructor, Student B had only cut the back of her hair, and seemed perplexed about how to do the front. At one point, fully wrapped in her robe, Lynne got up to go feed the parking meter, but another student intercepted and insisted on doing it for her.

Thinking of the list of errands that she had been planning to run, Lynne was silently hoping that the instructor would finish the haircut. At two hours, when most of the other students had left, Lynne insisted that she had to go too.

As demonstrated by the videos running on the huge plasma tv, the salon's style of finishing hair is to make it look like you've been in a hurricane. Lynne got a similar treatment.  She demonstrated to me at home later by sweeping the sides of her hair against the grain diagonally from bottom to top, and then the top in multiple paths until it looked truly chaotic.  The picture at the top of this page, taken from the Toni and Guy web site, gives you a good example.

Two hours and twenty minutes after she entered the beauty school, the haircut was done. Lynne called me in a very dispirited voice. She was completely worn out, and decided she wasn't going to stop in at Lowe's after all. She just needed to come home and recoup.  Now that Lynne's hair has had a chance to grow out a little, it's looking pretty good.  The experience cost $12.  A true bargain...or was it?

Note to our young friends:  we love you just the way you are.

Next time, I'll tell about our trip to Vancouver.  This picture is of a rose blooming in our side yard.

Hello to all,

Love, Sky

Listening to Obama from the upper left corner

So much of my life has changed, yet I treasure the parts that have not. Many miles and three time zones away from Kentucky, I still search the radio dial for an NPR station, and cook our favorite recipes using the same familiar pots and pans, now nested in a new kitchen. Last Tuesday afternoon, Lynne was still at work and I was chopping vegetables for our dinner, listening to the familiar voices on All Things Considered. I have listened to ATC since I lived in Durham (NC), "lo these many years" (about 34, to be more precise.) Now I listen on KPLU out of Seattle. And instead of listening to Obama's speech at 8:00 p.m., it was on at 5:00 pm.

In the context of new things and old, President Barak Obama falls in between. Going to his inauguration with Lynne and Pat and Anne was a highlight of my life, and makes a good story here where travel to Washington DC is such a distance. But Iman, one of our neighbors across the street (Adbullah's mother) came over and introduced herself because of our "I was there" Inauguration 2009 bumper sticker. She and her husband, Monem, had gone to the Inauguration also, intentionally taking Abdullah so that he would be able to say that he was there. And Julie, another across the street neighbor, grew up in DC but has never been to an inauguration.

I've been praying for Obama's safety and sanity recently, worrying that the aggressive and vitriolic behavior of his opponents would be more than he could take, but after sitting at the kitchen table and listening to his speech on health care, I have only renewed admiration for his vision, intelligence and compassion. Lynne came home in the middle of the speech and asked if I were crying. That would be affirmative...it's just something about listening to a such a gifted speaker...I teared up when he proposed that no one be denied health insurance due to a pre-existing condition. My health insurance woes are abating, but one chapter of this summer involved being turned down for health insurance because of my artificial hip. That's a helpless feeling.

This week I made two blackberry cobblers, an obvious choice since we are surrounded by blackberry bushes laden with ripe fruit. Blackberry bushes line one part of the trail that Winnie and I walk on, and our neighbor lets them grow on the steep part of his back yard. Lynne came home from work on Wednesday with blackberries that she had picked on her lunch hour. I do see people pausing on their walks or bike rides to eat blackberries, but I don't see people harvesting bowls of them like we did. It's true that the thorns are very effective deterrents when reaching to get the ripe berries that are hanging on the inside of the bush. The good news is not having to worry about chiggers or mosquitoes...

Our house is improving daily. We are approaching the "getting settled" but have not quite achieved the "settled in" state of living. We took advantage of a 25% off Re-Store sale last Saturday and bought a new (to us) Kohler bathroom sink for $3.75. The big bathroom is a dreadful combination of outdated swirly counter top and Italianate wallpaper with tarnished gold fixtures, so any bit of updating goes a long way. I'm sure Lynne would rather spend her days off relaxing (as in playing Spider Solitaire), but here she is, installing our new sink. Also, here she is, napping on the sofa after its done. Lynne has started working for OptionCare, doing home health in Skagit County, a 30 minute drive south of Bellingham. She says she would rather not be commuting, but that it is a beautiful drive through the mountains.

I have applied to substitute teach in three school districts plus a local Episcopal school, and to tutor at Bellingham Technical College, but I haven't worked yet. Its a new experience, waving Lynne off to work and staying home. I distributed compact fluorescent light bulbs in our neighborhood for Project Porchlight, and I will volunteer for them again on Sunday, exchanging incandescent light bulbs for CFL bulbs. I'm planning to take a class on making documentaries, but I am waiting to see if enough students sign up for it to fly.

I will plagiarize Garrison Keillor, by saying, "That's the news from the upper left hand corner..." I hope that everyone is enjoying fall and eating local crisp apples. Even the greenhouse tomatoes are not yet ripe here in Bellingham--that's one thing that we have had to sacrifice for all this beauty. Our new friendships have not ripened either, which is why I say, "Thank God for old friends." I send love to you all, Sky

News flash! Sky had just been called for her first substitute teacher stint to fill in for the music teacher. She will show "The Sound of Music" to the 6th and 7th graders at the Episcopal School here in town.

Winnie's new house

Some people just like to create order out of chaos (like people who play Freecell), so maybe that explains why I have loved living this week in our new completely disarranged home. Its Friday afternoon; we arrived here from the park on Monday morning. Just a sample of how things went--we had to prune an overhanging dogwood tree and an azalea before we could back the trailer into the driveway, and it took Lynne three turns around the block before she could get the trailer started at the right angle (if you have experience backing anything that is hitched to your vehicle, you will understand.)

Since then, besides making headway on the 80 boxes which were waiting for us in the garage, Lynne, our endlessly talented miracle worker, has installed a new kitchen sink and faucet (two times for the faucet, since the first one leaked like a sieve), installed our gas/electric range and replaced the terribly difficult and corroded bathroom faucet. She has learned a shortcut to the local hardware store--hey did I mention a local hardware store? This is the hardware store of your dreams--two floors packed floor to ceiling with every little plumbing washer or small base light bulb or tape measure you could ever want, along with knowledgable people to help when you need it. Its a family owned business, something that Bellingham is full of. So far we have had really good work from local craftspeople: the floor refinisher (Ken) and the tile installer (Dave) and the woman who sold us the tile (Kathleen) and the fence builder (Andy). In another week, Greg, the electrician will install radiant ceiling heat in the whole house, sold to us by Jeff from his local business Heating Green.

We have been warmly welcomed by the neighbors, who of course have opinions about our new fence and about the overgrown yard. Winnie has found a friend in Abdullah, the 4th grader who lives across the street, and his sister Selene. The three pugs who live next door (owned by Ron and Nancy) have terrorized Winnie (not difficult to do), so I was happy to see her romping around with her toy duck once the fence was in. Our yard has beautiful landscaping, but actually, too much of it. We have done lots of pruning already, and I see lots of weeding in our forecast.

I've included some pictures from our last Sunday afternoon at Larrabee State Park. Lynne took the picture of the underwater purple seastar at the top. The orange seastar with 20 tentacles is called a sunflower sea star, pychonopodia helianthoides. I found it on the beach at low tide. The two legged barefoot babe is me, playing with Winnie, who loves to climb around on the rocks but doesn't like to go in the water. The last picture (below) is Winnie running after her duck in our front yard now that the new fence 90% complete.

I hope you all will have an enjoyable Labor Day weekend. Its been a perfect sunny NW day today and as I write, the sun is on its downward path over Bellingham Bay, making a show of the city and water as it does every night. I look forward to sharing this peaceful and beautiful place with you. As always, thanks for your emails.

Love,

Sky

The soft side

Paddling alongside one of the waterfront parks in Bellingham was like watching a movie about happy people--the group of four practicing their juggling, juggling pins passing between two of them in a regular rhythm, young couples strolling, people sitting on the benches waiting for the sunset. We were stars among the 3 - 8 year old set, whose faces would go from surprise to delight when they saw us floating by in our orange double inflatable kayak. We waved and they waved back. Lynne and I were on our way back to the public dock after a late afternoon paddle in Bellingham Bay with our friend Cynthia who was visiting from BC. (She promises me to send the pictures of us kayaking.) We had hoped to see the harbor seals that were raising their young near the old and now abandoned Georgia Pacific plant. About eight harbor seals did put on a nice display for us, sunning themselves on a float out in the water, noses up and tails down. We must have scared them with the swing of our paddles, though, because they slid off into the water when we tried to get closer. Its funny how the animals move in when people move out. The other inhabitants of the Georgia Pacific plant are Arctic Terns, who took over a parking lot and turned it into a nesting ground. We could hear their constant squawking.

Cynthia, who came in part in honor of Lynne's birthday, also motivated us to explore the bay near Larrabee (our park), and we had had a lovely Sunday afternoon peering into the water looking for Dungeness crab on the sandy bottom. Lynne had waded into the water up to her waist on Saturday to catch some crabs for our dinner, but hadn't been able to hold on to the first crab she caught, and had to release the second one because it was female. We settled for digging for clams and ended up with a pot of Varnish clams. They were OK to eat but a little gritty, and we found interesting other things when their shells opened up like skeletons of baby crabs and unidentifiable objects which caused my appetite to suddenly decrease.

Looking for jobs here has been downright depressing. My brightest job prospect was for a library technician job in an elementary school, a job created out eliminating the librarian position and re-creating the job at a lower salary scale. I applied but I haven't heard from them. It did offer health insurance and was part-time... I've applied for several jobs and haven't even been called for an interview. I'm still plowing my way through the 8 page application to be a substitute for Bellingham Public Schools. I had to write an essay expounding upon my assessments and modes of teaching, and I still have to write one about my educational philosophy. Actually, I'm supposed to be writing those essays now, but here I am...writing to you.

Meanwhile, we are just finishing out our month as camp hosts at Larrabee State Park, which has started to quiet down this week after being full for several weeks. Our furniture arrived and is in our new house, but we have no kitchen sink and the plumber just came yesterday to install the toilet which was sitting in the bathtub. Andy, from Ish River Construction and his helper Lucky are in the front yard right now putting in posts for a fence for Winnie, and we just signed a contract to get radiant ceiling heat installed in the house (which did have baseboard electric heat.)

Yesterday we were here late at our new house and saw the nighttime view from the living room for the first time: twinkling lights spread out across the valley below us. It was quite magical, and it's the kind of thing that I love about Bellingham. There are lots of magical moments, like now, looking out the window at mature Douglas fir trees in our yard, and feeling the cool, clear breeze. We met our minister at the Unitarian church this week (he has been on vacation all summer), and I'm thrilled because he gave a great sermon and led the congregation in singing a round. He said that the courage to come to church comes from the hope that the soft side of us will be taken care of there. That's what I think about our journey from Kentucky to Bellingham. I have the hope that the natural beauty, the laid back culture and the progressive political climate will take care of the soft side of us for many years. I hope that for everyone--that we each can find that place, wherever it is, for ourselves.

Loving you as always,

Sky

Campground Characters

You don’t notice them at first, then you start piecing together pieces of the puzzle. I had noticed the first campground character a few weeks ago, when we stayed here as paying guests before we started hosting. He lives out of a beat-up black van, the kind with no windows. He drapes a camouflage tarp over the van and puts out a well used chaise lounge under the tarp, making a den out of his campsite, with the hill or big rocks behind him. Turns out the rangers and the park staff know him (let’s call him Roger) and his relationship with alcohol well, since he’s here every 10 days for 10 days. He alternates between Larrabee and Birch Bay, the state park north of Bellingham. Later I find out that he’s the guy that filled Lynne in with all the tips about living here in the winter. He’s been roaming between the two state parks for 5 years. He has a friend in town who makes reservations for him. His advice about the winter included: pick a site next to the host and across from the one restroom that is left open, use the water tap on the side of that restroom, pay only $6 per night for full hookups once you are 62, and then even less if your income is less than $35,000 a year. He described how beautiful the park is in snow. I can picture the fresh snow at the base of the towering Western Red Cedar and the Douglas fir trees, whiting out the park roads and signs. Despite Lynne’s enthusiasm for $6 a night, I cannot picture following in his footsteps…

Yesterday, Peter (one of the three rangers) and Red (one of the park aids) noted the return of the “hugger.” I have had lots of long conversations with him. We’ll call him Luke and he is here to read the Word, and apparently, to spread God’s love to all of us through his hugs. He and his wife had an unfortunate first night here in the park. The man in the adjacent site had had a taxi drop him and a case of beer off at the campsite. Luke and his wife were awake much of the night listening to a chorus of voices emanating from his tent—a woman, a child, a man, and someone who growled a lot. He kept up the antics throughout the day, even after Scott, the head ranger, spoke with him. When we returned to the park after our day off, we noticed two sheriff cars in the parking lot. Turns out they took about an hour to talk this guy into leaving the park, with his options being a detox center, the hospital, or the local vet center. Luke and Mary, his wife prayed for him but needed some prayers for themselves, as Mary was terrified by the camper. The weather had turned bad, so after their disturbed and disturbing neighbor left, Luke and Mary had to contend with rain and cold, which also distracted Luke from his study of the Word. I met them during this period, and had long conversations in which Luke tried to test my knowledge of the Lord and I diverted his lasso. He did get his hug in. Peter and Red have also gotten the hugs—Peter’s in the men’s restroom, much to his alarm. The staff has been warned about his inappropriate hugging. Here I thought I was special. Luke did tell me I had a beautiful heart.

Amber, the ranger who works most of the 3 – 11pm shifts, wins my hero award for the year. Here’s a list of deeds that I know of, and I do know that the list is much longer: rescued some hikers who were caught up on Chuckanut Mountain in the dark without a flashlight one Saturday night at 11 pm, drove a young guy from Seattle into town to the bus station after he waited all day in the day use area for a friend who was supposed to pick him up, administered first aid to a bicyclist who crashed up on the Interurban trail and hit her head, then drove her into the hospital, talked to countless campers who are still partying after the 10 pm quiet hour, found a woman with suicide plans at a trail head and talked her into going to the hospital as well. Amber’s academic background is in psychology, and as a park ranger, and I witness her using these skills on a daily basis. Amber is level headed and friendly, even though some unhappy campers whose party had been thwarted by her called her Ranger DingDong.

Oh yes, then there’s the curly headed woman from Kentucky with cigarette butts and candy wrappers in her hands who coaxes her reluctant dog to the beach every morning at 6:15…oh yeah, that’s me. We had a great dinner last night cooked over the fire except the baked potatoes (cooked in the microwave.) We had planned to get our furniture moved into our house tomorrow, but the floor guy is not done and so the new day is Friday. Yesterday was another spectacular blue day where the view distracts you from what you were supposed to be doing. My mood definitely dips in bad weather, perhaps because we are camping and the cold and rain impacts us more than it would if we were living in a house.

Lynne is now gainfully employed as a home health nurse, although we’re not sure of the start date. Thank you all for your great emails. I love hearing from you and we think of you often.

Love,

Sky

Good sports and purple sea stars

Days go by in cycles, and today feels like the calm after the storm.

For the first time in more than a month, we had some cloudy days culminating in a very rainy Monday night for our weekend visitors from Eugene, Oregon. Our friends Barbara and Hyla and their 9 year old son Alfonzo were total “good sport” guests. They were sleeping on an air mattress in our dome tent while we were tucked into the comfort of our trailer. My vision of all the swimming and kayaking adventures we would have when they got here, had faded. The closer they got to Bellingham, the colder and cloudier the weather became. True north westerners, they were undaunted by the cold and grey. Together, we had a fun Friday riding our bicycles along the Interurban Trail (which takes you around Bellingham Bay and out to this park) and poking around Fairhaven, a trendy end of Bellingham near the Alaska Ferry. Over the weekend, Barbara and Hyla and Alfonzo explored both beaches here at Larrabee; Barbara found purple and orange sea stars at low tide; we feasted on Dungeness crab for Saturday dinner and we all enjoyed marshmallows over the great camp fires that Alfonzo stoked for us. Of course, we also weathered the weather with more good meals and great conversation. We get the “Keeping Everybody Warm And Cheerful, If Not Dry” prize for Monday, when it rained off and on all day. After visiting with our Bellingham friends, Kay and Leslie, we ate out at a cool local restaurant called Avenue Bread for lunch, walked through Big Rock Garden (a beautiful sculpture garden) and even went bowling in the afternoon. Just to paint a picture, my score was 100 and I won; Barbara dropped the bowling ball behind her; and Hyla launched it airborne, onto the bumper guard and into the gutter. We ended the day at a restaurant overlooking the marina, watching the pleasure boats come and go and commenting on the men’s restroom after Alfonzo informed us that they had a TV over the urinals. Lynne and I were thrilled to have them visit, as we have been friends with Barbara starting in Lexington 33 years ago, before she moved to Eugene. We totally enjoyed spending time with her family, Hyla and Alfonzo.

We have mostly liked talking to campers and selling firewood in our role as camp hosts. We had a scary night (darkness, man shouting, woman pleading, car doors slamming, angry footsteps on the gravel path next to our camper) caused by a domestic dispute that ended with two sheriffs quietly carting off the offender. Quiet hours are supposed to start at 10 p.m., and the ranger makes rounds shortly after that to intervene at campsites that are still noisy. Our trailer muffles sound so that we don’t hear all of what’s going on in the dark (that’s a good thing.) People come from all over to camp here and have fun, so everyday there's a new influx. I helped with the Junior Ranger program on Saturday, and we had a good time and the kids learned a little about trees and safety.

Our house is coming along, although its still has lots of “unrealized potential.” The tile guy (David) is doing the kitchen and front entry way today, and the floors are sanded and stained. We do have to concentrate on some basics—like getting someone to fix rotted fascia board and replace the gutters. Lynne has a vision for the fence so that Winnie will have a protected yard. She’s talking to NW Fencing today. We hope to retrieve our furniture from storage next Tuesday, and work in painting and installing radiant heat after that.

Lynne is optimistic about the home health job, and I keep pledging to apply for other jobs but keep not getting around to it. I’m sure there is a message buried in there somewhere.

The dramatic weather in Kentucky made the news here, and we hope that everyone stayed dry through the storms.

I just finished reading The Hour I First Believed, by Wally Lamb and I really liked this line from it:
“Hope… By this, we dreamers cross to the other shore.”

Love to all,

Sky

Jigsaw puzzle in progress

We have lived through our first weekend as campground hosts at Larrabee State Park, and its been a very enjoyable time. Our main job is to sell firewood and to answer questions and be friendly “ambassadors” for the park. Our secondary job is to check the bathroom (both sides) and replenish the toilet paper when needed. We have cute green State Parks volunteer vests that we wear a lot. I make it a point to have the vest on when I go marching into the men’s bathroom shouting “Park Staff” with rolls of toilet paper and the key to the tp dispensers in my hand.

Last night, our Bellingham friends Leslie and Kay brought out Mid-eastern food for us all to enjoy, and then we sat around the picnic table working on the 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of shore birds that Lynne and I had bought 2 years ago but hadn’t had time to work. Throughout the evening, we had to stop to sell about 15 bundles of firewood and the puzzle served as an icebreaker with many of the campers. A young couple with 2 kids from Vancouver came to buy firewood and the mother eventually sat down at our picnic table and started working on the puzzle with us until her young husband came back for her about 30 minutes later. She was explaining the puzzle in Chinese (mandarin) to her young 3 ½ year old son as he was sitting on her lap, but I noticed that she used the English word for “puzzle”. She said she couldn’t think of the exact English-Chinese translation for this type of puzzle. Then a camper brought Winnie the bone from a T-bone steak--her first ever! Monday was a Canadian national holiday (they have a three day weekend every month), so we had lots of Canadians who had come down for the weekend. This morning, a woman knocked on our camper door and gave us a bouquet of flowers for our picnic table. On Friday and Saturday we had been helping a charming but somewhat befuddled couple (non-English speaking, although we don't know from which European country) figure out where to camp on Saturday night, and then before they left they gave us charcoal, leftover firewood and a can of pepper spray to protect against bears!

The ranger who hired us, Amber, has been very friendly. She has made it a point to check with us about how things are going, and her staff of young park aides has been friendly and helpful as well. Yesterday Amber drove us up the logging road to Fragrance Lake, which is usually a 2 mile hike straight up, and we got to talk with her about such diverse things as the sewer system in the park and funding and the sandstone boulders around the lake and apprehending people who mistakenly thought that Clayton was still the nude beach. She showed us several rock slides that happened over this past winter, which was more severe than usual. We are finding the work easy, and the timing is perfect as far as moving into our new house (top picture).

Our first task with the new house was to hire Ken Jones Services to remove the yucky old carpet ASAP, as well as the particle board under it and to install plywood underlayment before putting the new hardwood down. He and his crew have been working since Friday (this is Monday night) and they have finished 2 rooms and have 2 more to do. They will sand and stain and polyurethane the floors later this week. We are also trying to make a decision about what tile to put in the kitchen and foyer, and in the process found a cool local store with tile and bamboo flooring and cork flooring and cool doors and bathtubs and good service. We have tons more decisions to make, about fencing for Winnie, paint colors, door styles, and reclaiming the landscaping of the yard. Its fun to have this project, and already the house looks better. Lots of our decisions are based on maximizing the view (see below). Lynne already has a plan for placing the Mission style recliner so that she can sit in it while looking at the bay.

We continue to meet immediate neighbors—who seem delighted to have us there. Winnie is becoming almost a normal dog, going right up to Ken (#3), down the street, and letting him pet her. He helped the project by bringing out a box of dog biscuits so she could show off sitting and taking a dog biscuit nicely. Tonight we walked down to the park (at the end of the street) but didn’t have time to explore the trails too much. We turned around and walked home and noticed that we have another view looking north toward Canada that we hadn’t seen before. We hear that we can follow the trails to the nearest Haggens, the cool local grocery store chain, but I take that with a grain of salt. NW people think nothing of a 5 mile hike up hill and dale, so we’ll have to see how many bags of groceries get carried back that way!

Sounds like Lynne had a successful interview for her home health job, but she hasn't heard anything directly from them. I received a “Dear John” letter from the first job that I had applied for, and no word about the second. If we hadn’t found a house, we could have stayed on the coastal property of a merchant marine who was going to sea for 2 months and needed someone to water his new grass…I much prefer to think of us tucked away in our new house by the beginning of September.

Hello to all, and we can’t wait to see you!

Love,

Sky

Shifting sands, part 2

The sun is setting earlier every evening; we are wearing shorts in 60 degree weather; we laugh at jokes about introspective feeling people from Seattle; we’ve stopped taking pictures of beautiful scenes because there have been so many; and we will be closing on a house on Friday (house #2, the one with the view.) This morning, we pulled the trailer into Larrabee State Park, our last campground for the summer. We start hosting here on Wednesday, and will stay until the end of August. Next stop: 2219 Niagara Drive, Bellingham, WA 98229.

I’m including some beautiful shots I took when we drove up to Artist’s Point on Saturday to view Mt. Baker. It’s about an hour drive east from Bellingham, and it was Lynne’s idea to go there Saturday evening after another week of house buying negotiations and decisions. I have a stack of realtor paper work sitting next to me, which includes the 38 page problem list from the house inspector on the first house that we wanted to buy (Cedar Hills Drive). Somewhere in that stack is the distilled list of just those items that we asked the sellers to fix, and somewhere else is the very short list of the items that the sellers agreed to fix. The sellers’ disappointing response motivated us to go out and look at houses again (yes, back to the drawing board).

One of the houses that we asked Ken to show us was one that we had been watching from Kentucky since last spring because it has a spectacular view of Bellingham Bay. It’s also the first house that we drove up to see the first day that we were in Bellingham. The asking price of this house reflects the reality of real estate prices over the last year and a half. The owners started asking a high price in May of 2008; they reduced it to by 10% this spring after a year on the market; last month they reduced it another 10%. We offered them cash to close in six days if they would take 75% of their original price. That’s when we took the drive up to Mt. Baker, not knowing the response. We stopped in at a great Italian restaurant for dinner on the way home. The offer expired at 9:00 p.m., and when we checked email at 9 and found that they hadn’t called Ken (our realtor), we thought, “Back to the drawing board…” We were out of cell phone range at the campground. It turns out that the owners called Ken at 10 p.m. on Saturday night to counter, which we coolly turned down on our way to church (Unitarian) on Sunday morning. During church, I leaned over to Lynne and said the compromise number I though we should pay and she said yes with her eyes. That’s the price they accepted on Sunday afternoon.

So what convinced us to give up the Swainson’s thrush, the cedar forest and the NW charm of the first house? The house on Niagara is on one floor, is slightly larger, is close to the center of town and also close to Whatcom Falls Park. In the end, I think we wanted to be more in the swing of things, we wanted one floor and we are enchanted by the view. The house has 3 giant Grand Firs in the front yard. The house is a fixer upper, which is a pleasure for us both (OK, maybe we are a rare breed. The Re-Store in Bellingham is awesome, too). We are lying awake at night discussing how to get the yucky urine soaked wall to wall carpet out as soon as possible, whether it matters that the Grand Fir root in the crawl space warrants any action, what to do to build a laundry room and add a cabinet to the master bathroom, and where to put the cobbler’s bench. Winnie asked me to say that she has been a very good dog, an excellent dog, through all this time of driving, camping, and moving, and that in the end, she is not getting a very big yard. She says, yes, she can play some on the deck, but really, she needs some good stuff to sniff and some rabbits to chase and at least a letter carrier to terrorize, but she will accept good long walks in the park. Lynne adds that we will still have deer in the front yard and she might enjoy their droppings.

We have a month to accomplish what we can on the new house before we move in. Lynne has gone to Mt. Vernon today to interview for a per diem home health nurse position. As far as the house, I am thrilled to have “a bird in hand,” (although please know that I believe birds are happier in the bush.) I have applied for two jobs but I haven’t heard from either of them, and I have a couple more to apply for.

I hope you all will like the guest bedroom and the deck and the view and the peaceful but convenient setting of our new house. We should have it looking good, so let us know when you’re coming to visit. I send love to you all from both of us, and Winnie.

Shifting sands and the essential question

Not the physical terrain, but our lives feel like shifting sand to me now. Tonight we are back at Birch Bay State Park, after being at Larrabee State Park for the weekend, and Thursday we are going east to Silver Lake County Park, closer to the Mt. Baker wilderness.

We are doing a remarkable job of living together in this trailer (a modern studio apartment on wheels), taking turns for who stands up since we can’t both be moving around at once, heating up water on the stove whenever we need to wash dishes or ourselves, being careful not to run the battery down when we are camping in a site without utilities, and fitting everything we wear and eat into the overhead cabinets or storing them under the bed or kitchen seats.

You can see the limits of this situation when we are trying to apply for jobs. I brought along an outfit to use for job interviews, but we don’t have an iron or ironing board, let alone electricity. We don’t have Internet access in the campground, so we have been imposing on our Bellingham friends, Kay and Leslie, for wireless access, or going to the public libraries. We each made a file of important papers to bring with us on this part of the trip, so stuffed in with our bird books, road atlases and Scrabble game is my file with transcripts, birth certificate, health insurance papers, a file called “Books to Read”, and a folder called “Job prospects.”

This week, I did apply for a job and the process required writing and printing a cover letter (did it in the Ferndale library), getting three letters of recommendation (emailing my Eastern Standard Time references at 2:15 p.m. when I know they have gone home for the day), sending Lynne out to the camper to find my transcripts and my good clothes. I have another application (at Western Washington University) to finish this week. Lynne applied for a per diem home health nursing job until her nurse practitioner license gets processed. Meanwhile, we are out of range from the cell tower at Larrabee and we found we could pirate the wireless internet at the little camp store/ Laundromat that is just outside the Birch Bay State Park entrance.

I vacillate between the fun of being on vacation and the realization that we have to stop being on vacation. I think we would rather walk down to the beach each night to watch the sun go down than deal with home inspections and looking for work. We are facing an important question: are we beach bums at heart?

We have made it to the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship for two Sundays now, and we both are happy with what we find there. Last Sunday, we missed because of the Pride parade and celebration, the highlight of which was the Rainbow City Band, a GLBT marching band from Seattle, complete with flag wavers, who performed and danced Michael Jackson tunes. This event was our first exposure to the at large gay community with all its variations, from drag queens and leather dudes (I’d include a back view of that crowd but this is a family blog) to young tattooed student types, roller bladers and nondescript middle aged women and men like us. We stayed long enough to hear the mayor of Bellingham speak, and watched a little local entertainment. This week, we also went to a Tai Chi inspired exercise class at BUF and we both loved it. I also jumped into Lake Padden after we had taken Winnie for a walk and had a wonderful long swim in the lake, my first swim in this time zone.

I am missing all of you and at times I’m feeling a little lonely. We chat it up with everyone we come in contact with, (dog owners on the beach, the people around us at church, the customers waiting for fish sandwiches at the Farmer’s Market…) It isn’t hard because most people are open and friendly. Still, we have the hard work of establishing friendships ahead of us, and I know that it just takes time. I appreciate your emails more than ever, and hope that you know how much your friendship means to us. (We did get an exciting phone call that Julie may fly out to visit this fall and David and Ross have promised the same.)

Love to you all.

Sky

Looking and finding

The house hunting roller coaster ride of hopes and disappointments appears to be complete. Yesterday, at the end of our sixth day of searching, we signed a contract to buy the house at 1067 Cedar Hills Avenue in Bellingham. We spent the week climbing in and out of our realtor Ken's leather seated BMW. The process seemed like walking down the beach turning over every stone, asking "Is this the one?"

The prime neighborhoods in Bellingham, quiet blocks of Craftsman bungalows peppered with a few Victorian houses and some 1960s low budget construction are out of our price range. These neighborhoods are easy bike riding distance to Bellingham Bay and all the cool stores downtown (the coop, good restaurants, lots of coffee shops). Ken tried, but everything in our price range would require even more work than we would tackle, or was impossibly small.

We tried the suburbs next, looking at 1980's ramblers (ranches) on quiet streets with views of the Bay or Mt. Baker or the Canadian mountains, and had we acted a day sooner, we would have gotten one of those at a good price. The thrill of chasing that house was immediately followed by disappointment. Another bid had gone through the morning that we were going to write our own. Back into Ken's BMW. Ken has lived here for 30+ years and was very helpful in pointing out the good aspects of every house, while steering us away from bad neighborhoods and 0verpriced houses. He also (with our prompting) regaled us with stories about his house overlooking Chuckanut Bay where he lives with his partner and their nine golden retrievers. We now know more about breeding and owning Goldens than I thought there was to know. Someday when we are sitting on a porch overlooking a spectacular NW landscape, you can ask us how his champion dog, Andy, has managed to impregnant 400 girl dogs. Or you might not want to know...

We looked at about 25 houses in person, and numerous others online. By mid afternoon of our first full day of looking, we had found only one promising house but had rejected it because it was on a busy street. I was feeling very discouraged. To get to the very last house on our list, we drove east beyond the city limits into the lower levels of Galbraith Mountain above Whatcom Lake. Tears came to my eyes when we got out of the car. To the left of the house is a
creek on the edge of the forest (owned by the city of Bellingham) that covers the top of Galbraith Mountain. Two huge western red cedar trees tower over the edge of the property, and beyond them, a trail leads off into the woods. The lot is almost 1/2 an acre. The first thing that I heard was the song of several Swainsen's thrushes, which you normally hear only in deep tall NW woods. What I didn't hear is any traffic noise; I am swayed as much by the quietness up there as by the house. Yesterday when we were back for our second look, a deer walked across the back yard.

When you see the house at 1067 Cedar Hills Avenue, you will say, "That's perfect for Sky and Lynne". Its a split level with a cabin feeling, cedar posts at the base of the stairs, a high window over the entryway, a skylight in the bathroom, a peaceful deck off the dining room, 3 (smallish) bedrooms (including a guest room for our visitors), a large basement "family room" and an attached two car garage with lots of storage. After about 5 minutes, Lynne and I looked at each other and said, "We are interested." We made a 90% offer on Tuesday. Two anxious days later, the owners turned us down and countered with too high a price, so we were back in the BMW the next day. I'm leaving out the emotions of the whole process--arguments over whether to go with the high price, tears over whether we will ever find a house, discouragement over coming all this way and not finding the perfect house...I'm sure you can fill in the blanks.

We've seen lots of high priced houses, bad houses, noisy houses, small yards and houses painted entirely white with the popcorn look on the ceiling for a quick flip. It was looking like a long summer in the camper when we got the surprising call from Ken on Friday night that the owners of the Cedar Hills Avenue house agreed to our original offer. This news is something to celebrate, because the amount that we are paying for this house is less than our proceeds from selling Raintree. We will be able to buy the house outright, and still have some money to do some upgrades. So here we are on Sunday morning, lolling around and feeling like we've worked hard and we can go back on vacation. Our closing date is August 11th.

I'm also leaving off that every day this week started with a long walk along Birch Bay with Winnie (at our campground), that the high of 77 degrees (a heat wave) and cool breeze under completely sunny skies is spoiling us, that we are enjoying being around Kay and Leslie and Kay's 20 month old (perpetually moving) grandson.

This brings us to the subject of employment--the next task on the list. We will enjoy the Pride parade and celebration today, and tomorrow, get down to work looking for work.

We think of you all often. We found a great restaurant down on the boat docks last night that we hope to take you all to, and we love hearing from you.