11 Days Down

I’ve been struggling a little bit with the emotional impact of my cross-country move. Despite Kathy and Jill being clearly amazing and giving me (and my cat!) a place to live and lovely company, there’s just something weird and difficult about being in a different time zone and losing your routine completely and not knowing where anything is and being unemployed and just kind of feeling…displaced, you know?

Also, this horrible (read: wonderful) thing where from the distance of 3,000 miles a person can be weird and moody and their best friend doesn’t know it versus being on the opposite end of the couch where she can look at you and know everything? (Also, Kathy could almost always tell from a distance anyway and I’m clearly fooling myself, but my “NO I AM NOT CRYING” has less of an impact when she can see me?)

Anyway, I’ve been here a bit over a week and wanted to focus on some awesome things instead of my general moodiness, so here is a not-comprehensive list of all the things that have made me happy since I landed at PDX.

-       Kathy and Jill were waiting for me when I got off the plane with hugs and excitement. In my ‘I just packed up my whole life and have been on a plane for almost 7 hours exhaustion’, I told someone who asked if I had been on the flight from New York City “No.” Oops, yes I was. I don’t know why that makes me happy, but it does. 

-       Running errands with Jill on my first day here because, seriously, grocery stores that don’t exist where you used to live are actually really fun and exciting?

-       Walking down the street to get drinks and some food from Coasters, which is a perfect and trashy little bar. Trying to play darts but having no clue what any of the 400 options were or what we did to temporarily break the game in the end. Also, I’m very bad at darts. I don’t know this based on my score (because I don’t understand my score?) but based on the fact that most of my darts just bounced off the target?

(Jill took this picture. I stole it from her instagram.)

 -       First food cart visit since moving! We went to The Angry Unicorn and all got The Best Burger (which lives up to it's name) and giant glass bottles of soda. Bonus points for the fact that the cart had a cool bottle opener built into the side. Double bonus points for JP jumping up and biting a bee that was flying around terrorizing us and then triple bonus points for the owner of The Angry Unicorn coming over and further stepping on the bee to kill it and save us all. Also, when we were leaving, his chalkboard stated “ONE BURGER LEFT” and he must have sold it because he added an N to the front which made me giggle. All the bonus points.

-       Jill being the best chef in the world, probably? Practically every night she’s cooked some amazing dinner, which I’ve gotten to eat. Why would I ever move out? This is a dream come true.

 -       Going for a walk with Kathy and JP where Kathy showed me the park she plays basketball in, which I will one day soon go with her and play basketball aka swing on the swings. 

-       Taking a bus all by my grown up self to Powell's which is an amazingly huge bookstore where I intended to look at books about Portland, but also picked up a couple YA novels because I’m unemployed and it’s a good time to buy really necessary things like that? I also walked around the city by myself for a few hours just to look around which is something I should probably start doing more of. Seriously though, I lived in Boston. I spent a lot of time on public transport. Yet, I’ve never really taken a bus before? What even.

-       Going to a chili cook-off, which, frankly, I was nervous about because I’m really bad at parties? And being in groups of people I don’t know? And meeting strangers? AND EXISTING AS A RATIONAL HUMAN BEING? But luckily it was lots of fun and everyone was super awesome and Jill being the best chef in the world paid off because her chorizo and yam chili totally won! Also, the wine I picked out almost won the wine contest and in the end we took home all the prizes anyway, so yay!

 -       Okay, so earlier this week I made a list of things that I wanted to do in Portland and one of them was to check out the Portland Flea, which is a flea market that takes place once a month. Kathy and Jill had never been to it either, so we all trekked off on Sunday morning. Let me tell you that the word “flea” is used super loosely. It’s basically a lot of hip overpriced used stuff with none of the fun digging around at a flea market feel. I was really happy that we went, but am in certainly no hurry to go back. However, afterwards, we went to the House of Vintage, which is this HUGE vintage/thrift shop and it was amazing and totally made up for the flea being slightly less than. They also had a great old photobooth that was still functioning and had been hooked up with a credit card machine, so I swiped my credit card and forced everyone to get in. Photobooths are basically my favorite things and I’m totally going to make us have a tradition of getting our pictures done in the old one there because it’s a dream come true. (I have nerdy dreams.) 

-       Walking around the neighborhood by myself, just to get out of my job-applying-pajamas for a bit and walking by a dude eating icecream off of a paper plate with a fork. When you need icecream, you just NEED IT.

 -       Speaking of icecream…we went to Salt and Straw, which is the most amazing place ever. Right now they have a great Thanksgiving menu with awesome flavors like Sweet Potato and Candied Pecans and Salted Caramel Thanksgiving Turkey (Kathy said you could really taste the fat) From the Thanksgiving menu, I got a scoop of Pumpkin Custard and Spiced Chevre and a scoop of Almond Brittle with Salted Ganache from the regular menu. We also brought home a pint of Apple Cider Sorbet which is super exciting. ICECREAM IS JUST REALLY A THRILL, GUYS.

-       Just hanging out and watching all the stupid things on TV. Though I will never admit it in real life, I really like all the poking and kicking Kathy does when I’m not paying her enough attention while we’re all sitting around. It’s nice to just be here and not on skype while I talk way too much during shows.

So, yeah. While my emotions have been kind of up and down, a lot of fun stuff has happened as well, so I’ll go ahead and call these last 11 days a success with so much appreciation for the people who are letting me annoyingly invade their space for a while. At least I’m trying to contribute by washing the dishes as much as possible.