Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Stumptown, Summer '11

Michele and I had been tossing around the idea of making one last Portland trip before she starts work for the last few months.  We finally made the decision to go on Saturday.  I called Tim and Lucy to get the okay to use a spare room and Sunday morning we were off.  Porter slept the majority of the way way down and we only had to resort to The Human Beinz on repeat for the last 20 minutes or so.  I'm telling you, it doesn't matter how crazy that kid is getting, nothing quite shuts him up as well as that song.  Okay, maybe the Colbert Report opening sequence also works but that's considerably shorter and I'm not so sure that iTunes has it. I know I have a strict no birds in my fucking house rule, but if we could get a bald eagle to do nothing other than let out a scream the moment the boy starts to cry, that rule might just find some flexibility.  Shit I get sidetracked easily.

After a quick visit to Pat and Leah's we headed of to Tim and Lucy's to find this in the driveway:


Tim and Lucy finally took delivery of their new Alaskan camper, all kinds of badassery on the back of a pickup truck.  I've been thinking a lot about something like this for a while but I think when I toss the Element it'll be for something a bit smaller, kinda like this.  Oh, and when I say "kinda like", I mean damn near exactly like.

We sat around and shot the shit for a while, ate dinner at the house, I spilled Michele's wine all over the couch, and some other things happened, but that's all inconsequential.  Porter would not sleep.  The kid was up forever, and much like a hotel, we don't feel like we can just let him cry it out in the home of others.  It took quite a while to get the kid down, eventually I had to resort to driving him around at 11:30 until he fell asleep.  Thankfully he is now at a point where I can pull him out of the car seat and he won't wake up.  Right, so Sunday night not so great.

Monday, Lucy had to work but Tim was free (retirement, am I right?) so we hit Bob's Red Mill for breakfast followed by some back to work cloths shopping for Michele.  After leaving Clackamas Town Center we headed into town to find lunch.  While driving along on SE 82nd all I could think about was how much I hated that road.  It's lined with all kinds of crap I want nothing to do with and there's a red light every 100 yards.  I remember very clearly thinking to myself "boy am I glad we landed in PA, this shit sucks".  Not 20 minutes later I'm sitting at Pok Pok on 32nd and Division drinking my "33" and eating The Best Wings I Have Ever Eaten thinking "yeah, I could have totally lived here".


After lunch we shot over to St. Johns to pay a visit to my grandmother who is now 96 (?) and can't remember anything at all short term.  It was a very pleasant visit and by the time we were leaving she was not only asked Porter's age repeatedly but also guessing it correctly before I could answer.  It's interesting how things start to stick after being repeated over and over again.  I made sure to subtly include all the answers to the questions she kept asking when I signed her guestbook.

We put a finished out the day with a visit to Red Robin with Pat's family as well as Tim and Lucy.  Yeah, that's right, Red mother fucking Robin in the land of other worldly eats.  However, if we had not gone than I would have never had the early 20s girl run up to me in the lot to say "oh my fucking god that kid is so motherfucking cute he fucking has my fucking boyfriend's motherfucking eyes, I just fucking love him".  By the way, that is a direct quote, it was delivered in a perfect Jersey Shore kind of way and it was awesome. 

The best part about the entire trip however, was Monday night.  Porter would not sleep, I could not sleep, and Michele could not sleep.  There was a lot of thrashing around, ineffective breastfeeding, and crying.  By 8 in the morning I had slept all of about 3 hours all night and had to drive us home.  We hit Pine State before rolling out and all was right with the world.

*It occurs to me that I have a hard time closing shit down here.  If I figure something out I may edit, but don't count on it.

2 comments:

JMH said...

I've heard great things about Pine State from my buddy who lives just down the street.

Thinking a Tacoma will be my next vehicle also, once the old Subaru finally dies. Could be awhile.

Unknown said...

The Element is a little more cumbersome to camp out of than the truck ever was, mostly because we have to unpack and repack every time we set up or break camp. I like the idea of the Ecamper but 5.5k is a lot of money to throw into a car that's not really meeting my needs so much anymore.

Anyway, nothing will be changing in terms of the household fleet until after we buy a house. I'm thinking this time next year for the truck.