It’s been rather a whirlwind, but I’m in and I’m stayin’ here for at least the year. I keep telling myself, this Fall and Winter will be the test. Thus far – not yet a month, the weather has been a nice surprise. Yes, there’s been rain, but from the reports I received from non-Oregonians – I would surely be covered with mold by this time. Having experienced that in actuality on the sailboat trip, where even the dried Eucalyptus grew a fuzzy green coat, I can tell you that I have not yet succumbed. Yes – it has rained, but on most days, it’s cleared off to reveal blue sky and temps in the mid-high sixties.
Just such a pattern showed itself in the hour it took for me to walk part of the beach a few days ago. The Oregon coast is apparently notorious for its wind and I walked leaning into a gale-force blow, picking up a hefty tail-wind on the return. I loved it. Just for fun, I took pictures of the progression of the weather during that hour.
But the season is young. I’ve been waiting to be as cold and wet as people threatened, but not yet. I have, however, been introduced the the world of boots, having visited the local Fred Myer store and asked to be directed to “boots please.” Isles and isles of boots: polka dot boots, furry boots, fancy boots, short boots, tall boots, fishin’ boots, bog-boots, Xtra-Tuff boots, psychedelic-flowered boots – yes – even glittery boots. Everything but cowboy boots. I’m not in Texas anymore apparently. But these boots are made for walking, skipping through puddles, wading through surf and – as I have experienced – surviving a trick-wave with your back turned. I now have boots and have packed away my umbrella for travel, having been instructed that it broadcasts one as a tourist.
And so it would seem, I have at least moved in evidenced by the unloading of a trunk full of boxes at the recycling center, making several runs to Goodwill and one to donate boxes of books to the local library, which is not funded by the city – only donations and volunteers. Although the town has only 10,000 people, its recycling center is a good indicator of how serious Oregon is about recycling. I discovered this focus when I waited for my wee-trashbox (yes BOX) to be picked up two weeks in a row. I discovered that it would be picked up every forth Tuesday, while my HUGE recycling bin is emptied every OTHER Tuesday. This is an effective training strategy it turns out, not t mention helpful when one is continuing to purge the detritus of three years out-of-the-loop.
Before and after move-in
I unloaded about 80% of my belongings and life before running off to Africa. It was liberating! Opening the boxes packed away for three years was like Christmas and a life-review all wrapped into one. Some items still provoked, “What was I thinking?” moments as I unpacked puppets from India, a hand-embroidered almost unwearable Chinese coat and a monk’s robe, etc. etc. Well – now they are at Goodwill – in the Halloween section no less. Yes, I saw them there. It’s been great fun taking the basics of this “furnished” cottage and mixing them into the tableau.
For those of you who saw the snaps of the cottage before I moved in and have asked for updates, here goes. Tweaking continues, but it’s feeling like home and it turns out that 875 square feet feels just right. It requires me to be conscious of what I bring in, what stays and where things land. It suits me. Maybe I’ll write a book, if I can stop arranging things… And below is the view from the stairs: before and after.
The unloading the storage in Austin, loading the U-Haul, unloading it again in Hillsboro and then re-loading has had its moments. Not finding but ONE person in all of the north beach area to help, resulted in a call to Brett to “please help.” So it fell to him and a not-so-strong helper to move the hideously heavy-beast-of-an-heirloom-table you see below. To my metaphysical friends, the round spots you see to the right are – I think – finger smudges on the original camera lens and not “orbs.”
And finally, a real kitchen with more than the two burners and an actual oven. No more cooking brownies in a makeshift oven 1/3 of a recipe at a time. And a refrigerator that works more than a few days out of a month. Life is good. For good measure, I hid the microwave into the back of a storage closet. There are some habits I don’t want to re-start – although when I bought a box of micro-wave pop-corn the other day, only to return it for the real thing I wondered whether I was that committed or if I should “BE committed…”
So that’s most of the news for any of you who are still tuned in. The next installment is to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. However, I have read, courtesy of a FB post, that “If you haven’t grown up by the time you’re 50, you don’t have to.” So there. Still, I’ll be returning to Austin on a quarterly basis to teach at Austin Board of Realtors and to see clients, so that’s a least a bit of a framework to build around. The desire to lead life more simply and more intentionally is what started this whole phase, so I’m taking things one intentional step at a time.
