One Year Later

It's hard to believe I finished my teaching contract in Korea one year ago today. During this past year, I would think back periodically to what I was doing one year ago, like, "Last summer I was teaching the drama class!" or "Last year at this time I was on a ferry to Jeju Island!" or "For Thanksgiving last year we had a huge foreigner potluck!" Back when I nearly died of happiness when my coworker gave me little baggies of hard-to-find spices like nutmeg, cloves, and allspice and almost cried at pumpkin pie, smoked salmon, and good cheese.

The end of February was crazy last year. I had just a week left at school after being on vacation in Australia for 3 weeks. I came back from southern hemisphere summer to Korea's blanket of snow. I remember getting to the airport in Seoul and finding it comfortingly familiar. It was my 3rd time flying in, and I didn't even have to check schedules or follow any signs to get to the bay where I could catch the bus to my city. It was just straight back to Gunsan for a week of wrapping up.

I cleaned out my desk, transferred lesson plans to the new teachers, and was the only lucky foreign teacher on the panel to help interview and select the new Korean teachers for the school. There were no classes, so while all the other teachers were just hanging out in the office, napping or reading or watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I was sitting in a half-day interview conducted almost entirely in Korean. I really wanted to zone out or doodle or excuse myself or suggest doing the English portion separately, but with the Superintendent and the Head of the Board of Education there, I thought I'd better just buck up and deal with it.

I also had to say goodbye to the awesome friends I met in Gunsan. This meant a last open mic night at The ROK, and last dinners of grilled meat and delicious kimchi.

I've even managed to see a couple of my Korea friends since leaving- Cherie and I met in Spain last summer, and I've hung out with Phil in Bellingham and Seattle. And I have no doubt that I will see a small handful of other friends at some point, especially the Americans and Canadians.

I had a great year in Korea. That doesn't mean I loved every aspect of the culture, or that there weren't hard moments. I don't miss being stared at all the time, the overcrowding everywhere, being pushed and elbowed in public, being openly asked my age/marital status/salary, told bluntly that I've gained/lost a few few pounds, the drunk men shouting below my apartment window most nights, the last minute required staff meetings, the totally mediocre beer and lack of microbrews, the horrendous driving, the pollution, the lack of zoning and noise ordinances, the dangerous cycling conditions, the general obsession with physical appearance/perfection, or seeing young students completely overworked, stressed, and exhausted.

Korea is just not in my heart the way Mexico or Italy are. It's not somewhere I'm aching to go back to. But it did provide an awesome setting for a year of teaching, for a salary where I could live comfortably AND save money, for a chance to learn a non-Roman alphabet, to understand a little about Confucianism, to try new and delicious foods, to make life-long friends from around the world, to feel safe all the time, and to just get comfortable in my own skin of being in such a totally foreign place. I felt very taken-care of, and was constantly amazed by the kindness and generosity of many of my Korean friends and coworkers. And since I've been home, there are aspects of Korean culture that I miss and try to maintain, namely making and eating kimchi, and going to Korean spas.

That year made me realize that often experiences aren't so much about what you do, but how you do it. It almost wouldn't have mattered what country I was in, but simply that I was living there fully, with my whole heart open to all the newness. I wasn't questioning myself or second-guessing what I "should" be doing- I was just doing it. And that is precisely why it was so fulfilling. Now, to just keep that attitude here in Seattle!

A Florist's Valentine's

For those of us in the floral world, Valentine's Day ends up being more about work than love. I started at a flower shop in Bellingham nine (!) years ago and have worked every year since then except 2005 when I was in Mexico, and last year when I was in Australia. Last year was probably the best Valentine's Day I've ever had: no long work hours, just summer in February, a trip to an animal sanctuary, wine tasting in the beautiful Yarra Valley, then a Melbourne bike ride to a gastropub for dinner where I had my first taste of kangaroo alongside roasted beets and a glass of red wine.

But I digress. This year since I'm in Seattle it was an easy jaunt up to Bellingham to jump in as holiday help and hang out with some of my favorite lady friends and coworkers. It's also really fun to be back among the flowers and the chance to be creative with that medium. Sometimes customers are very specific about what kind of arrangements they want, but a lot of the time we just have free reign within a certain price range. The dialogue at work gets very specific, and I find myself saying things like, "this tropical arrangement could use some leucadendron!" or "seeded eucalyptus with waxflower can go from gardeny to weedy real fast, huh?" or "agonis [dark red foliage] makes everything look cooler!" or "Should I add curly willow? Do you think she's a twigs-with-her-flowers kind of lady?" It's a good feeling to get lost in the details of design.

Now don't get me wrong- I don't love the over-commercialization of Valentine's Day, the crappy chocolate, the expectation to get something for a sweetheart, or feeling lame if you are single. But like any holiday, it can be whatever you make it. And that's partly what I enjoy about working at the flower shop- you get to help customers express something heartfelt, meaningful, and specific to their special some one.

The clientele consists of a huge range of ages, styles, and budgets. One man was a metal-shop teacher at a community college, and wanted to put together a bouquet that would go in a vase with black stones at the bottom, and welded roses he had made. I thought that sounded awesome. Another guy professed to not know anything about flowers, but with a little help picked out amazing red dragon cut orchids and burgundy calla lilies that any one would have loved to receive. A woman wanted to get one big unusual flower for her partner, and got wide-eyed at a huge, fuzzy protea. We backed it with kangaroo paw and a piece of tropical foliage, and it was a totally weird and really cool bouquet, something unique that I personally would enjoy getting. "It looks prehistoric, like a caveman flower! Uh, in a good way, " I said. I really liked helping a 20-year-old skater/punk boy who hand-selected a gorgeous, though surprisingly traditional bouquet of oriental lilies, bells of Ireland, stock, and mini gerber daisies. Another man knew that his girlfriend loved orange asiatic lilies, and wanted a bouquet of those mixed with other flowers. I put something together that was nice, though subdued and very natural. He looked at it sheepishly and said, "I don't know... I just think she'd like more color. But you're the expert, it's fine!" I assured him it wasn't about being an expert, and he was the one who knew her so he should go with his gut. I redid the bouquet with bolder, brighter flowers and he was much happier. This type of floral design is like a social experiment in collaborative art- gauging the customer's opinions and time constraints with their vision and price and still making something beautiful. It's a tiring but rewarding few days of impromptu art with strangers.

The most amusing love advice came from a well-dressed, middle-aged man who came in to order flowers for his wife. "Sometimes I'm still amazed she married me," he said. "When a man meets a woman he likes, he's like 'Wow' and gets totally intimidated. When a woman meets a man, she's like, 'Yeah... I guess I can work with that'." I was cracking up as I wrote up his order.

The most puzzling card message I filled out was from a man sending roses, who proclaimed his love but signed his full name.

"I love you. -Jerry Miller"

I mean, it just seemed a little strange to have to put your last name on a romantic gift. Was she getting love notes from more than one Jerry or what?

The most epic order came from a man who wanted to send flowers to a woman he had recently "messed things up with", and wanted to completely overwhelm the porch of her cute county home with cut flowers and plants. He knew she loved yellow and blue, so we did live daffodils, hydrangea, and flowering jasmine, plus arrangements of sunflowers and lilies with pussy willow. Apparently my boss delivered all this, first setting up everything nicely on the porch before ringing the doorbell. When the woman opened the door she was speechless at first, then nodded slowly. "He listened," she whispered. I don't know anything about those people, but I sort of hope they got back together.

And so it is, every year Valentine's Day is totally different and sort of the same. We worked long days, ate at the shop without sitting down, did multiple coffee runs per day, rocked out to good music, and got the usual delivery of special heart-shaped bagels from the Bagelry.

After the madness was over, I even found some energy to volunteer at the Everyone's Valentine show at the Bellingham Circus Guild. I could not think of a better way to spend my Valentine's Day night than seeing a bunch of old friends and watching hilarious, artful circus performances.

I hope you had a Valentine's Day full of love and silliness, whether or not you are in any kind of romantic relationship. Signing off with a little Rumi wisdom:

Drawn to the Sea

The other day I was feeling a little out of sorts, and didn't know quite what to do with myself. Then I heard about a bonfire at a city beach, and realized that was exactly what I needed- to be near the sea, to smell the salt, to see lights twinkle over the darkness of Puget Sound, to feel small on the shore of something big, to remember that I am mostly water. And in that love for the sea, to appreciate the contrast of the fire- the dancing shapes, the heat, the glow.

The Sea- by David Whyte

The pull is so strong we will not believe
the drawing tide is meant for us,
I mean the gift, the sea,
the place where all the rivers meet.

Easy to forget,
how the great receiving depth
untamed by what we need
needs only what will flow its way.

Easy to feel so far away
and the body so old
it might not even stand the touch.

But what would that be like
feeling the tide rise
out of the numbness inside
toward the place to which we go
washing over our worries of money,
the illusion of being ahead,
the grief of being behind,
our limbs young
rising from such a depth?

What would that be like
even in this century
driving toward work with the others,
moving down the roads
among the thousands swimming upstream,
as if growing toward arrival,
feeling the currents of the great desire,
carrying time toward tomorrow?

Tomorrow seen today, for itself,
the sea where all the rivers meet, unbound,
unbroken for a thousand miles, the surface
of a great silence, the movement of a moment
left completely to itself, to find ourselves adrift,
safe in our unknowing, our very own,
our great tide, our great receiving, our

wordless, fiery, unspoken,
hardly remembered, gift of true longing.

Please Please Please

Okay, on my last blog post I wrote about how much I love Seattle and know that I want to stay here for awhile.

Unfortunately, that realization doesn't necessarily mean that all the "moving to Seattle" puzzle pieces just fell into place immediately. Sometimes there's some lag time between deciding that you want something and it actually happening.

My first order of business was finding a job. I had been landscaping part-time but was looking for more hours. I found an ad for a full-time position that I was really excited about, and put my whole heart into the application process. And it was a loooonng application. I could probably have applied to grad school in less time. Then I sat back to wait. I paced. I checked my inbox. I decided the only reasonable thing left to do was to learn "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" by the Smiths on my baritone ukulele. (Here's a uke version on You Tube) It was like my prayer. I really wanted that job and I deserved it. A couple hours after learning the chords and singing it forlornly to myself, I got an email: they wanted me to come in for an interview the following week.

It worked! My musical prayer was heard. I did the interview, which went great.

Later that day I was talking to my mom about the job interview and an interview for a house that sounded awesome. "When you are working at that place..." she started saying. "I'm not counting any chickens before they're hatched!" I replied. "But if you move into that house..."

"Ahhh, no counting chickens, no counting chickens!" I shouted.

Later I was talking to a good friend who lives in DC. We were discussing bicycle shopping and dating and looking for places to live, not quite knowing what was going to happen with any of those things. "There are so many balls in the air, it can be a little tiring," she said. "I know! I'm so tired of the balls too!" I said.

So it became my strange mantra for the day, "Tired of the balls, no counting chickens!" It's a difficult place to be in, to have so much uncertainty that you are trying to peg down, but not able to get too set on any one thing happening.

To make a long story short, I didn't get that job. January had started out hard and didn't seem to show signs of getting better. First of all, there was the nausea. Now, anyone who knows me knows I have a stomach of steel. I've eaten street food all over the world with negligible consequences. I can eat on a bus winding through the Andes while reading a book. I can cook and eat meals on sailboats lurching and heeling way over. I never get any kind of motion sickness, nausea, or loss of appetite. But for some reason still unknown to me, I have had a low-grade, constant nausea for weeks. It's hard to get anything done when you feel sick all the time.

Then there is the black hole that appears when you have too much free time. If you work full-time, you are probably reading this and groaning, thinking what a luxury that would be, what you wouldn't give for a day off- all the things you could get done with so much extra free time. The problem is, you really don't use the time the way you think you would.

On a related side note: I took this awesome Modern Lit class in college with a great, if very eccentric professor. He seemed to be stuck in a 19th century British persona- affected way of speaking (read: fake accent), top hat, wool and tweed suits, fitted overcoats, vintage spectacles, perfectly trimmed pencil mustache. (He was very reserved and proper, except for the day we started reading The Metamorphosis by Kafka. The first line of the book is "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." I will never forget that line because this professor repeated it while lying on his back on a table, writhing as if an insect in bed.)

Anyway, we were reading something, maybe Madame Bovary, and this prof said how no matter what the tragedy in the novel is, the character will be consumed by it. Basically, your emotions will expand to fill the vacuum. Then he mused, "Maybe time is that way too. Have you ever noticed that if you have a weekend to do homework, it will still take you all weekend to finish whether you have one assignment or five assignments? Time expands to fill the vacuum."

And I think that's true to some extent. We get done what we need to get done for our lifestyle, and the reality is that when you are underemployed, you're too depressed to do all the fun projects you initially think you'll do. I've had a lot of days where I go for a run, drink some coffee, do the dishes, drive my brother to an appointment, send off a resume, revise a cover letter, and then it's fucking six pm! Later some one asks, "What did you do today?" and you just stare at them, bewildered at how to go about an answer.

I know I want to stay in Seattle but I definitely questioned that at times when things kept not panning out. The good news is, I think things are on the upswing. I'm working more. Transport-stiffling Snowmageddon has passed. I have a renewed faith in the house search. Mostly, I feel so grateful to have such caring, supportive friends who were there for me when I was in dire straights. I want to give a big, huge thanks to Elizabeth, Lindsey, Tegan, and Annie K especially, for always being there to talk, share a meal, have a drink, or go out to see live music, and listen to me and remind me of all the good in life. Those ladies can officially cry on my shoulder until the end of eternity.

My mom said to me recently, "Things don't happen quickly for you." I don't think that's necessarily accurate, as it sort of depends on what I'm doing. This is also the woman who told me, "If you ever find yourself pregnant or just want to have a baby but don't want to get married or have a partner- that's fine! We'll all help you raise the baby." (This comment had nothing to do with the nausea. She actually said it awhile back- I just still think it's hilarious and mildly ridiculous) Did I mention my mom is a conservative Christian? Apparently her grandma biological clock is ticking louder than her sense of propriety.

Point is, I really respect her, but I have to take some things she says with a grain of salt. I don't know if things happen slowly or quickly for me, but they just happen when they happen. These last few months I've had to find a balance of being proactive and making things happen, and accepting that I don't have control over things. And that the recession and high unemployment rate are real things that affect our daily lives, not just numbers that happen to some one else.

Apparently I can't write a blog post these days without a quote from Anne Lammot's Bird By Bird.

"It helps to resign as the controller of your fate. All that energy we expend to keep things running right is not what's keeping things running right. We're bugs struggling in the river, brightly visible to the trout below. With that fact in mind, people like me make up all these rules to give us the illusion that we are in charge. I need to say to myself, they're not needed, hon. Just take in the buggy pleasures. Be kind to the others, grab the fleck of riverweed, notice how beautifully your bug legs scull."

I'm happy to let this month trickle into February. Meanwhile, I'm watching my bug legs, not counting my chickens, and offering up unconventional prayers for what the rest of 2012 may hold.

Tired Paws

The name of this blog, which I've been writing for over four years, means "Amber on the go" in Spanish. I've rarely lived in one place for more than 6 months in the past decade. I spent years in Bellingham but was in and out traveling and studying in Latin America. When I did live in one place for a whole year, it wasn't even in America, but in South Korea.

In Mexico in 2005, my Mexican boyfriend Josafat immediately pegged me as a "pata de perro". This literally means "dog's paw", but translates more as backpacker, wanderer, or globetrotter. I also very specifically remember him saying, "Te enamoras con tu entorno" meaning You fall in love with your surroundings (or wherever you are in that moment)". How could I not? There are so many amazing places in the world to see, and a little bit of your heart can fall in love over and over. Yes, I've been a Pata de Perro for a long time and am incredibly grateful for the life that I've led. Last year alone, I went to 10 countries on 4 continents and took at total of 17 different flights.

I never thought I'd say this, but my little dog paws are tired. I don't want to be on the go anymore right now. I had a great experience living in South Korea for a year, but if anything it made me appreciate and LOVE the Northwest more than ever. After being in Korea, going to SE Asia, Australia, then to Europe in the summer, a little voice in my head was screaming at me to stay in Seattle. It wasn't even a conscious, logical decision, weighing pros and cons of career and romance and social networks or whatever makes some one move somewhere. It was just what my heart said and I had to listen.

I would run into friends or family and they'd ask, "So when's your next trip?" Nope, not going anywhere, I told them. I don't want to get on another airplane for a long time, and if I go anywhere I have about a 3-hour land-or-sea travel radius. That means my cardinal boundaries are essentially Vancouver BC, the Cascades, Portland, and the San Juans. That's as far as I have any interest in going. "Hah, we'll see how long that lasts!" they scoff. "You'll get bored in a few months and be off again!"

But I don't think I'll get bored at all. See, I used to be drawn to the dynamic feeling of always being on the move. There were so many places to go, cultures to get acquainted with, histories to study, languages to practice, new systems and concepts to wade through, interesting people to meet, foreign boys to kiss. I felt like I was always challenged and growing by traveling, pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

All those wonderful things definitely happen when you are on the go. But the same little voice was also telling me, Those things can happen when you stay put too. Being in one place definitely doesn't mean being stagnant. In fact, just the opposite; there are ways we can grow and develop ourselves in a stable home setting that are almost impossible while traveling. For instance, I have worked on farms and gardens from Bellingham to Italy, from Orcas Island to Korea to Mexico. I want to be somewhere for more than one year if only to see a garden in its second season. If only to eat the canned goods that I worked so hard to preserve. If only to make sure my little niece remembers my name.

And so, I'm digging my heels in and giving my paws a rest, at least for awhile. And I'm embracing the fact that life is as meaningful, beautiful, rich, and adventurous as we make it, whether we travel the world or live for 90 years in one small town. It's all a matter of finding what's new for you, in your own community, in your own way. And for me, the conventionality of a 9-5 job in the English-speaking city where I grew up feels brand new and exciting.

I can't sign off without an ending thought from Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird:

"All the good stories are out there waiting to be told in a fresh, wild way. Mark Twain said that Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before. Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions."

Eastside Cabin Weekend

This past week my dear friend and fellow blogger Elizabeth turned 30. We celebrated in the city on her actual birthday, but the weekend was a chance to get out of town. On Friday, the birthday girl plus 4 of us headed over Highway 2 to Plain, Washington, somewhere between Lake Wenatchee and Leavenworth. We stayed in one of her friend's cabins- though it was more of a house with 3 bedrooms, a loft turret, tall ceilings, and hot tub. It was a clear day with about a foot of snow in the yard. First things first: we unpacked the car, with every one bringing various food and drinks to pitch in for weekend provisions. D had recently hosted a dinner party and had a lot of leftover cheese, so he brought in a gigantic armload of tupperware full of cheese, imploring us, "We HAVE to eat all this cheese." It was that moment that I knew we were destined to be friends.
While the rest of the crew jumped in the hot tub, Eli and I wanted to play in the snow. We had a blast sledding down the tiny hills in the yard, since after all, beggars cannot be choosers. We wanted to build a snowman, but the snow was too hard and didn't pack well. Then I had the idea to build a cooler for our drinks that didn't fit in the fridge. We were keeping drinks cold by just keeping them outside, but I thought they needed their own area and envisioned a sort of open-walled pedestal. After a few planning meetings, Elizabeth and I came up with this lovely and functional cooler.
R was in charge of dinner, and she made her mom's famous tomato beef soup, complete with homemade pasta noodles and organic canned Amish-raised beef that her mom sends her from the midwest. The soup was soooo good.
On Saturday morning we had a really relaxing time just hanging out- coffee, breakfast, reading on the couch, and funny David Sedaris stories on This American Life. In the late morning, the rest of the guests who couldn't leave town on Friday arrived in 2 carloads. We made lunch and then a group of us headed to Lake Wenatchee state park to go cross country skiing. I have downhill skied and snowshoed, but somehow in my life never have been cross country skiing. It was fun gliding through the woods with awesome ladies and getting used to this new movement. We got out of the trees and were rewarded with a stunning view of the lake.
We also did some real sledding, not the tiny hills of the previous day. I marveled at how the simple, simple act of going down a slippery hill can be fun for humans of all ages.
That night I was on a team dinner duty. K had made pulled pork for tacos and an AMAZING, mostly homemade dark mole. We had all the taco fixings, plus her pickled red onions and my home-canned green tomato salsa.
Then another friend busted out a homemade birthday cake for dessert- tres leches! I know I had tres leches cake in Mexico, but usually from bakeries, and have never had it homemade here in the States. It was innccredddibble. (I got the recipe and am looking for an excuse to make it, so if you want to be my excuse, just let me know!)
So yes, the trip was mostly about eating and playing in the snow, just as an eastern Washington winter cabin weekend should be. Elizabeth and I have known each other since we were 12, but have almost never lived in the same place as adults. I'm so happy I could celebrate 30 with her- Happy Happy Birthday Eli!

Happy New Year

So far 2012 has been treating me well. New Years Day started with a polar bear plunge into the Puget Sound at Golden Gardens. After the cold, refreshing dip, new and old friends gathered around the fire to chat, drink coffee, yerba mate, cook eggs over the flames and eat homemade bread. Costumes, acrobalance, burning Christmas trees, and a crisp view of the Olympic mountains added to the festive atmosphere on the beach.

Day two of the new year I traded cold water for hot water and went snowshoeing to a hot spring near Steven's Pass. It was my first time this year in snow! I marveled at the beauty of the mountains and the falling snow while soaking in the tub, grateful to spend the whole day outside in the winter.

So today is my first day to really assess what 2012 means to me. There is still a lot of unknown, but no matter what I end up doing, I want to do it well, and with intention. Here is a passage I loved from the book Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott. She is talking about writing, which I want to do more of this year, but it can apply to anything.

"You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. You can either set bricks as a laborer or as an artist. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself."

Happy New Year- here's to losing and finding ourselves in everyday, unexpected ways.

Quite the Year

I will remember 2011 as the year that I got to do an incredible amount of traveling... enough to possibly even get it out of my system for awhile, if you can believe that. I feel so incredibly lucky and blessed to have seen so many new places and spent time with people I loved. Here's a quick recap, mostly in photos.

I started the year in Gunsan, South Korea where I was finishing a year-long teaching contract. It had snowed on Christmas and didn't get above freezing for the whole month of January. I'd pass this snow-covered Buddhist temple on my bike ride. (Yes, I learned how to cycle in the snow.)

Our school had a winter English camp, and I taught the drama class, in which I wrote and directed a modern musical version of the Wizard of Oz for 64 middle school students. They sang "Help" by the Beatles, among other songs, and luckily some of my awesome Korean coteachers choreographed the dances.
In February I went to Australia to visit my dear friend Scott. We hiked around the Grampians National Park (as well as we could with all the trail closures after the floods) and saw emus and kangaroos and some of the oldest petroglyphs on the planet.
We also drove to Sydney and back via the coast, stopping for caves and fresh oysters and local cheese and beaches.
Then I headed to Southeast Asia for a month, where I had one of the absolute craziest experiences of my life- riding a motorbike in Saigon, Vietnam. I managed to stay alive and avoid accidents, and even drove onto a ferry with a kazillion other bikes.
In Cambodia I watched the sunrise over Angkor Wat.
In Thailand I visited a couple friends, took a cooking class, and made it out to some islands.
In April I was back home to enjoy the beauty of the Pacific Northwest in spring.
I didn't want to leave town again before going to our annual family work party on Memorial Day weekend in the San Juans.
Then it was off again, for a long-awaited trip to Europe, where I hadn't traveled in over 10 years. I met up with Cherie, who I had met in Korea, and we traveled in Spain and walked a bit of the pilgrimage route El Camino de Santiago.
We went to Barcelona together, then parted when I flew to Italy. I started in the north and volunteered on a farm in Piedmont.

From there I made my way down the coast to Genova and Cinque Terre...

... and then to another farm in Tuscany.
In August I came back home to the warm summer, and made sure to do plenty of hiking, including a trip to the Olympics.
In September my Australian friend came to Seattle for the World Hardcourt Bike Polo Championships, and I ended up watching a lot of bike polo at Magnuson Park.
I also went to Mount Rainier for a group campout weekend, which happened to also consist of a historical 1899 roleplay murder mystery game.
Later in the fall, the whole family took a trip to Seabrook on the Washington coast.
Well, there were of course a million other things that happened, but those were some of the highlights. Can't wait to see what 2012 brings. Happy New Year!

Merry Merry

Merry Christmas! It's hard to believe another Christmas has already come and gone. It's been a sweet, peaceful, and very traditional holiday here in Seattle with my family- big Christmas Eve party with Norwegian brined meat, potato lefse, a Santa suit, and singing around the tree with lots of enthusiasm but gaps in the verses. Christmas morning at my mom's with satsumas in stockings, then brunch at my aunt's with waffles, bacon, frittata, coffee and Baileys, and mimosas . It's funny to think I've done these things for almost all 29 years of my life (minus the year I was with my friend's Jewish family in Mexico, and last year in South Korea). There is comfort in doing the same thing, and yet what is surprising is that each year is not the same at all. Kids get older, a divorced spouse is absent, a new girlfriend is brought, a family member is sick, or recently recovered. This is what I like about tradition- that it is not always the same, just the same context for a family to grow and change.

A coworker at the flower shop asked me last week what my favorite thing about Christmas was. After considering a moment, I said, "That it's such a big holiday that people make the effort to get together." It's a time when it's okay to put everything on hold and make time to see family or dear friends. If we didn't do that at this time of year, would it happen at all? On the flip side, the holiday can create a lot of pressure and stress- on people to travel in winter, to decide who to visit, to figure out what to do at all if they don't have family or a close community around.

And of course, there are many other holidays to celebrate in this season. We say "Happy Holidays" as almost a euphemism or sneaky substitute for "Merry Christmas", but I like the idea of honoring other things that are actually happening at this time of year, namely the return of light, instead of a birth that we all know didn't even happen in winter.

And so, besides celebrating Christmas merrily, I've really enjoyed gathering with friends the past week in Solstice parties and potlucks, and Hanukkah candle lighting and singing. We are in the dark heart of winter, and these holidays remind us of the light within ourselves, the warmth in the people we love, and nature's ever-changing cycles. It has to get dark to get light. And even as the bustle and cheer die down, we have to remember that every day is a minute or two longer, and even in the deep grey of Seattle, we have a quiet, resolute strength to get through the winter. Here is a quote I recently came across, by writer Melanie Rae Thon- "The chickadee comes to the feeder. Even now, so close to twilight! Less than half an ounce of feather and hollow bone, ten drops of blood, heart smaller than a fingernail — yet she survives all night, every night, all winter."

Merry merry to you, whatever you may be celebrating.

Cow to Beef

It wasn't the best weekend to leave town. I worked all day Friday so I was leaving Seattle late. I turned down an event I really wanted to volunteer with, a fundraising dinner for Just Garden. There was not one, but two different friends' birthdays on Saturday. But it's rare to get a chance to go out to our family's property in the San Juan islands in December. In fact, in my almost 3 decades of life, I don't think I ever have. And I have definitely never been a part of slaughtering any cows that the family raised.

Yes, that's why I went out for the weekend. Vegetarian friends, you may not wish to read on. My family has raised organic, pastured, grass-fed cows on this land since I can remember. Usually they are sold live at a cattle auction, but for a variety of reasons including lack of profit margin and lack of full-time residents on the property to care for the animals, we are starting to phase out raising cows at all. So we are slaughtering the ones we have and keeping the meat in the family in our last years of beef production.

It may seem strange, even inhumane, for me to set aside a weekend to kill a huge animal. Anyone who knows me knows I'm the kind of person who won't kill a spider- even at a friend's house I will offer to take the spider outside for them, trapped between a piece of paper and a cup while in transit. But I eat meat, and prefer to eat animals that lived happy, healthy lives and died quickly with as little suffering as possible. The best way to ensure this is to eat animals that I've had a part in that process.

I got out to the island early Saturday morning, thanks to my step-dad picking me up on Orcas. He had french-pressed coffee ready for me in the thermos, and we enjoyed a calm, bright grey boat ride with seal heads poking out of the water and buffleheads swooping by.

There were 8 adults that convened for the Cow to Beef project. The bull stayed in the pasture and a younger cousin shot it from the other side of the fence.
Another cousin slit the throat to drain the blood, and then we skinned the hind legs to expose the rear tendons. There is place between the tendon and bone where large animals can be hung up and it will support the weight. We put a crow bar through and then raised up the whole animal on a rope with a Caterpillar tractor. It was quite a surreal sight because the bull was massive, probably around a thousand pounds. Then my cousin drove the animal a quarter mile where we would do the gutting and skinning near the barn.I have experience skinning deer, so I had no trouble jumping in and helping skin while others worked on field dressing in front. However, the skin was much thicker, and the domestic animal much fattier, than the wild deer that I'm used to.

Field dressing is more technical because you don't want to puncture any of the organs, especially, obviously, anything containing urine or feces. This is the most time-consuming part as it needs to be done carefully, or you risk ruining the meat. But it needs to be done relatively quickly so that the body can cool and the meat exposed to air to start curing. They finally got all the guts out, and it was quite a large pile. Just the heart alone was enormous.
Once the guts were all out, we finished skinning, and then took off the head. At this point it was starting to look more like meat in a butcher shop. From there we cut it in half with a sawzall, then into quarters.
Even in quarters, the meat was extremely heavy. It took four adults to carry each quarter 30 feet into the barn where it could hang overnight. We estimated that the quarters weighed 200-250 pounds each. Finally, after hours of standing and working in the cold December air, we were finished with the cow project for the day.

But there was still more meat-related foraging to do. Larry and I went to pull up the crab pots in the bay, since winter crabbing is currently open. As I pulled up the pots, I was shocked at how full they were.

I've done a lot of crabbing in my day, and never seen a catch like this. Only about one per pot was female, and a couple were undersized, but for the most part they were all regulation-sized males.
That night, we had a feast of fresh crab and wild king salmon straight from Alaska. My cousin and I also taught every one the drinking game King's Cup, which turns out is pretty fun even with non-alcoholic beverages.

On Sunday, we had to cook all the crab that had been kept in the live well. It was quite a process cleaning, cooking, cooling, and packing them all up. Here is our two-burner set-up.
As soon as that was finished, we moved the beef quarters from the barn down to the boat. We loaded up the back of the truck, also a totally surreal image.
Once we got the truck to the dock, we used the crane and winch to lower the quarters onto the boat. It worked really well, but took quite a few people.
With that, the weekend's work was done. We headed back to Anacortes in a very heavy boat in the afternoon light with a great view of Mount Baker. Since it's a lot of meat and no one in the family is a butcher, the plan is to just take it to a local butcher who can do up the cuts we want. I'm looking forward to trying the meat that was raised from start to finish within the family. Sorry for the graphic, slaughter-centric post, but it was such an interesting experience I couldn't help but share.