moss moss moss rain! rain! mold.

Brandon is going to be SO EXCITED! I am posting today! With words! Sure, why not? Here we go and strap yourselves in, I am rusty!

I am in Portland, and if I were to do a spot-on impersonation of Portland, it would go like this:

"drip, drip, drip, mossssssssssss growwwwiiiiiiing."

Being in Portland means watching a lot of Kourtney and Kim Take New York. I constantly have to remind my mom which one is Kourtney. (Kourtney is my Kardashian. We all have one.)

"The short one is Kourtney. She's like the me-Kardashian."

"That one?"

"No, the tall one is Alex. Kim is the Amanda. You're the Kris."

"Does that make your dad the Bruce?"

". . . Yes."

Being in Portland also means torturing my baby for whole minutes at a time in the car and watching a lot of YouTube with Blake. It means that at any given moment, somebody is humming this.

And do I miss my husband? Yes. I laugh infinitely less often when he is not around. Does Huck miss his daddy? Yes, that too.

Being in Portland also means being in Grants Pass. Oh good, now I can talk about this part:

I have given it some thought, and I would like very much to be a minimalist. Doesn't that sound lovely? Like, in my heart of hearts, I'm all "One stripe-y shirt is enough, thanks. Who needs more than one necklace? I only have one neck!" In my heart of hearts I am very logical like that.

But I am a Maximalist. Like Jonathan Adler. Or rather and more specifically, like my grandmother Shirley Jean.

We spent some time Monday afternoon looking through my Granny Goose's collections of tablecloths. Some women collect stripe-y tops, other women collect tablecloths, who am I to judge? At one point my Granny Goose was showing us one of her many Christmas tablecloths, in a lovely cream and gold, which she purchased because "just in case I ever needed it." Have you ever used it? my mom asked. "No, but I just thought I should have it."

Half of my brain nodded at her reasoning while the other half of my brain recoiled in horror. That is my brand of crazy right there, passed down through the generations, the need to hoard $5 white v-neck tee shirts from the Walmarts and buy every stripe-y top under $20 because there is obviously no such thing as too many stripe-y tops only but sometimes I wonder, is all.

This was me as I was packing my bag for Portland, with my mother overseeing the endeavor:

"I will pack this . . . I will pack that . . . I will pack every stripe-y shirt I own because . . . wellllll . . . (cue my luggage being too stuffed for anything else) . . . oh bother."

A better person than me would be making some kind of life-altering decision here, but I am on vacation. All of these words that just flew from my fingers hurt my brains coming out. Physically hurt my brains!

Oh right I was going to talk about my farmhouse.

First, this. My sister Amanda is decorating a new house and I am tagging along for funsies except that all these cute things for houses that you can buy in the suburbs are totally hurting my feelings.

Home Goods? Let's not talk about it.

I happened to meet my soul mate of a very unrealistic couch today and my heart broke into a million pieces. She was a blue, high-backed floral lover with button-tufting and I cried, I did. And then I bought her,  imaginarily speaking, for my farmhouse. Do you have a farmhouse? I have a farmhouse. With a rusty green pick up truck in the driveway and chickens out back, and also a barn cat. Peter Pan is in love with the barn cat but she has no use for him, the poor soul.

While I was at it I also bought a free-standing bird house made of powder blue chicken wire for my farmhouse. And then I baked a loaf of bread which I planned to eat with my homemade lemon curd. And I made peace with my inner maximalist, and with all of the unnecessary seating arrangements I will someday have maybe, and with my too many stripe-y tops to ever wear in a lifetime, and with my Christmas tablecloths for just in case.

And then I texted Brandon back home in our tiny apartment, where you hardly have room to think a coherent thought:

In five years we are moving to the country. I'll need rubber wellies for this

And now, with no clear summary or point to this post, I am going to bed.