I suck because...

Should I count the ways?

1. I haven't blogged in eons.
2. I got a haircut that, when I wear my hair in a ponytail, looks like a sad, bad bowl cut.
3. For dinner, I ate crackers and mayonnaise.
4. I cannot do math.
5. My garbage stinks but I don't have the energy to take it outside.
6. My Dexter DVDs are insanely overdue.
7. I haven't blogged in eons.

I do have some good news: I fell in love with a new city. The Ham. Or, Bellingham, to you laypersons. Here are some photos, with brief explanations of what I saw when I took the blog out for a walk.

1. Here I am in Fairhaven (charming neighborhood of Bellingham) with Anne, and a minivan that looks exactly (and I mean exactly) like the car I was driven around in as a child. The sentence I think I heard most when I was young was, "We need to run errands." And errands, friends, were always run in a white minivan with wood paneling. When I was five and I stole a candy bar, the white minivan with wood paneling was my getaway car (though neither the van, nor my mother, had any idea).

2. Have you ever seen anything happier, or more enticing, than a used bookstore so full of books that they're stacked knee-high into every possible corner? I cannot begin to describe how this place suited me. I want to live there, and never leave it, and have someone bring me fish and chips every day. Some people might think it looks like an inky, musty death-trap. I say: Heaven. In Fairhaven!

3. This, here, is a double-decker bus out of which are sold fish & chips, and ice cream. Upstairs, on the deck, are some mannequins, and doll heads, and cut-outs of human faces. No big deal. The bus smells very enticing, unlike most busses, with nice looking people sitting outside, and I really wanted to go in. But we'd just eaten a huge breakfast, so I could only look longingly from the sidewalk. At one point, Robert said, "You must really like that bus. You keep looking at it." I did really like that bus.

4. On several of the nights in Bellingham, we ended up at the Ranch Room, which features a jukebox, a Sopranos pinball game, and a 24-hour diner. At one point, I slid the camera across the table to Robert, so he could take a picture of dear Anne and me. We smiled, he snapped the photo, and said, "Turned out good." Then he handed the camera back, and I saw that this was the photo he'd taken. Thanks.

5. Look, I'm no photographer (as this blog frequently proves). I'm just a standard, pose-and-smile picture-taker. So, I feel enormously proud for capturing this moment. We were on our way to the antique mall (Bellingham is full of antique malls, used book stores, vintage boutiques, and other stores that specialize in cool stuff that is old and cheap), and the entrance features this curious banner: "Fantastic! Congress of Oddities." Which is just a striking statement, and one that is often an appropriate description of my life, and certainly seems appropriate to the photo above, featuring Matt and Robert.

In conclusion, Bellingham is my kind of town. And the friends that live there are my kind of people. And the friend that got stuck road-tripping with me out there--well, he doesn't believe in sharing drinks, which I find odd. But he does believe in loaning out treasured CDs, and not guilt-tripping people when they need to make yet another pit stop, so he's okay too.

Sloggishly, sluggishly, sheepishly yours,

Kendall

Here's Your Misshaped, Lumpy Heart

Two things about me: I don't get too excited about Valentine's Day, and I don't bake. I mean, I've done both before (getting excited about Valentine's Day, and baking), but never together, and either one on its own doesn't bring me all that much joy.

So imagine my surprise today, when I found myself baking cookies for Valentine's Day, with Ciara. She made the dough (thank god, because me and "measuring" are not friends), and then I rolled it out, and helped make heart shapes with the cookie cutters, and drizzled chocolate on the sugar cookies at the very end (Did I drizzle chocolate on some of the cookies in such a way as to suggest a broken heart with a crack down the middle? Why, yes. Yes I did. That's the honest truth about hearts). It was mostly lovely, until the very end, when we were both sweaty, tired, and we made four GIANT cookies just to be done with all the damn dough. Happy frickin' Valentine's Day.

But before that, as I finished rolling out and cutting the sugar-cookie dough, I would collect the scraps and smush them together again and again, making a smaller and smaller ball until it was too little for a cookie cutter. I showed Ciara the tiny remainder of scraps.

"Just make your own heart with it," Ciara said. So I did. I used my fat, flour-covered, non-baking fingers to mold my own little heart, and I put it on the cookie sheet with the rest. Then, I went about my business, trying to make chocolate-chip cookies shaped like hearts (it doesn't really work, FYI, they mostly look like butts).

At one point, Ciara turned to me. "Here's your heart," she said, and held out the sad, misshaped, burnt-to-a-crisp heart I'd made from scraps. I thought to myself, "Yeah, that seems about right." And I ate my heart in a single bite. It was tasty!

Here's the best news of all. When you bake cookies at Ciara's, it starts like this:

(no, the recipe doesn't call for whisky. but the bakers do.)

Yucca Brevifolia. Yeah, I said it.

(Well, hello, Joshua tree)

I admit it. I am not one for the out-of-doors. I want to be--it sounds so good on paper to be outdoorsy--but at twenty-seven it is time to give up the ghost. I prefer bathrooms, and constant access to snacks, and television. Still, when I found myself deep in the desert (Joshua Tree National Park), I was able to briefly embrace my inner-outdoorsiness for long enough to pat the trunks of some joshua trees and to scramble up some boulders.

It looked like this:



Jubilant, right? At the Visitor's Center, they said that we were free to "scramble up some boulders," so we made sure to take full advantage. As it turns out, usually you do most of your scrambling on the way down. Like this:

And, as is usually the case with nature, I learned some important things about myself while out in it.

1. Eat before hiking! It is hard to hike hungry. Three of us had only eaten a cookie for breakfast, and that did not sustain. Nor did the Luna bar that Katie generously split four ways. While walking, we encountered a spiky bush called, poetically, "Cheese Bush," and my first thought was, "Can we eat it?" But the bush only smelled like cheese.

2. Leggings are a) extremely comfortable for a hike and b) a little bit dangerous, as there is a lot of climbing, lunging, and occasional hoisting, and ones friends may be unable to resist some pinching or swatting.

3. Even though I don't get vertigo at the top of tall buildings, or while flying, or when climbing a flight of stairs, I definitely do get vertigo when balancing atop rocks and looking down at other, sharp-like rocks upon which I do not wish to dash myself. I learned that here, at the dam:

Vertigo, it turns out, feels like the ground is rushing up to meet you, and nothing is solid beneath your feet, and you can't stay balanced, and you're maybe--just maybe--about to throw up.

4. While we were out walking, boulder-scrambling, and posing for photos to prove that we'd done something so earthy while on vacation, I made a few jokes about getting all "spiritual" because we were out in nature. The truth is, I can see why people do go hyper-spiritual in places like Joshua Tree. For the two hours that we were walking around, I was constantly stunted by the size and scope of all we saw in a landscape that looked nothing like the Pacific Northwest. It is hard not to be reminded of your own stature (tiny, tiny) and permanence (non) in a world that keeps showing you things you've never seen before.

Vertiginously yours,

Kendall

Like a car, but so much better.

Sometimes, in life, a girl has just got to pack a suitcase and hightail it to the desert with three of her very best friends. Sometimes, it is just necessary. So, this past weekend, I went to the desert. Not the Mojave desert. Not the Gobi desert. It was Palm Desert. California. Home to eight million golf courses, tasty Mexican restaurants, terrible radio stations, and outdoor swimming pools in which you can swim in January. We had a ladies' weekend for grown-up women where we did grown-up things that reflected our maturity and wisdom.

Like golf cart photo shoots!!!

You would not believe the golf carts in Palm Springs. These golf carts are tricked out. And what I find really remarkable is that when I told my friends I wanted photos of them (for the blog, I said, for the blog!), they didn't bat a collective eyelash. Katie identified the most photogenic carts for the photo shoot: she's familiar with this 'taking the blog for a walk' situation, as I've made her do it before, while KW and I just got next to the golf carts of our choosing (I liked the tangerine one--so cheery! Kelsey went with the Royal Ride, the Rolls Royce of golf carts, she's always been drawn to bling), and Lib clicked away with her camera phone. Before I'd even made it back to Idaho, she'd sent the pictures to me in an email that just said, "Blog It Up." Friends, do you know what that is? That is friendship.

We had a golf cart of our own, that came with the condo we rented, but it was a standard issue golf cart. Still, I drove it like I stole it. I'd never driven one before! Even though the condo was about six houses away from the pool, I'd zip up and down the street for any excuse I could think up. I loved driving that zippy little cart. I had to leave a day earlier than the others, and on my last day in the desert, as the sun started to set and we found ourselves more and more in the shade by the side of the pool, Katie handed me the keys to the cart, even though I'd had way more than my fair share of turns behind the wheel, and said, "Here, you better drive us back. You have to leave tomorrow, and this might be your last chance." So I zipped us the hundred yards back to our house, and as I drove I thought, "It doesn't take all that much to make me happy after all. Happiness is just being with my favorite people...in a golf cart."

Tune in tomorrow, when I take you even further into the desert...Blog, we're going to Joshua Tree!

Aridly,

Kendall

Honey is what??

Sometimes, I see something and I find it so thought-provoking and surprising, that I get all fidgety and anxious about who I can tell. Then, I remember. The blog! I can tell the blog.

Blog, listen to this: "Honey is bee vomit too."

I know this not only because someone scrawled the message across a sign outside of the arboretum, but because, after seeing the sign above, I did some serious, hard-nosed research. I pulled up my Google task bar and entered, "honey bee vomit."

Turns out, honey is regurgitated by bees after they consume nectar. If you really want to know (and you do, don't you?), bees consume nectar, and then the nectar hangs out in their "honey stomach," which is different from their other stomach. We're supposed to be comforted by that. Also, once the nectar is turned into honey by the enzymes in the honey-stomach, the bee voluntarily regurgitates it. And we're supposed to take comfort in that too--that the regurgitating is voluntary, which somehow distances it from the involuntary vomit that is totally gross.

Why did someone go to the trouble of writing this message on the "Pets Prohibited" sign? To point out how often something lovely (honey) is linked to something profane (puke!)? To remind us that, in life, the lovely and the ugly are interconnected and mixed together, and you can't have one without the other? Want beautiful flowers or big, tasty vegetables? You'll need some crap to make them grow. Want honey for your tea? Well, some bee is going to have to put its finger down its throat to pull some back up for you. Want love? Well, you're going to have to put up with some crap, too. (And this is supposed to be comforting: the crap we encounter and work through is part of the nature of the thing, and it might--if you follow the metaphor far enough--actually prove nourishing.)

Nourishing like bee vomit. Or manure.

Basely yours,
Kendall

PS: Obviously, the person who tagged the sign was protesting the park's apparent objection to dog poop. I'm pretty sure the arboretum was more concerned with maintaining its trails and keeping animals from wrecking their exotic, delicate plants. Still, I'm happy that person took sharpie to sign. I can't tell you how often in the past few days I've thought to myself, "Honey is bee vomit, too." Try it. See if you don't feel comforted.

Honey, will you take the blog out for a walk?

Seattle in pictures:

After a terrifying (terrifying!) trip through Eastern Washington and over the profoundly tall Snoqualmie Pass, I arrived in Seattle. On Wednesday, Katie took a "personal day" from work, and we ventured out into the neighborhood of Queen Anne. I did something I had never done before: I brought my camera along to document the fascinating items we encountered (so I could "blogument" my trip here, obviously).

1. We started out with a latte at Cafe Fiore. It was a quintessentially "Seattle" coffee shop (read: it was rainy, and we came inside where they made us coffee, which we paid for--so Seattle.) I told Katie I would take a picture of my latte for the blog. She said, "Don't they make leaves in the foam in Idaho?" (they do, if you go to the right place...a little corner shop called the OWC.) I said, "I think it's pretty. It will look pretty on my blog." I took a picture. Then, I picked the lid up off the table to put it on the to-go cup. Katie asked, "So, it doesn't bother you that your lid was face down on the table and now you're going to put your mouth on it?" I considered. I hadn't thought about it before, but it totally did bother me. Still, to save face, I pretended it didn't. I said something about the strength of my antibodies.

2. Katie said, "Look at that cool advertisement for Queen Anne Fresh Eggs." I was all, "Blog." Then, "Will you hold my coffee so I can take a picture?" (See #4.)

3. Weird. One white chair just sitting between two white birch trees. The only white items on the block, like some sort of display (only one white tree fit in the photo.) I wanted to sit on the chair, but I was pretty sure I would've ended up at Hogwarts, and, although I've fallen way behind in my reading, from what I hear, Hogwarts has become a pretty scary place.

4. Katie holding my coffee again, so I could take a picture of her holding my coffee so I could take a picture.

5. Orange vespa! Have you ever seen a cheerier color? But isn't the vespa missing a wheel? And doesn't it remind you, just a little, of a three legged dog? The dog's got no idea that it's missing something, so it's a happy dog, but you feel sad for it because a dog should have four legs! A tangerine vespa should have two wheels!

6. Manicure and pedicure. I don't get these very often, on account of I'm uncomfortable with the lingo (mani-pedi), and also being touched. I did very nearly kick the woman painting my toenails when she tickled a tender spot in my arch, but was able to retract my foot right before making contact. Then, she gave a little tug and popped every single one of my toes. pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. All ten. Glorious! I didn't even know they needed it.

7. Chambord. Hello. I met Chambord. It is the reddest of red liqeurs, with an outrageously ornate bottle with gold. And a crown on top. It looks like something a witch would use to make a potion (at Hogwarts, perchance), or like something Katie would use to make French martinis for a really lovely holiday party with lots of lovely women, and baby Henry.

8. Finally, in conclusion, to wrap up all the ground-breaking lessons I learned on this trip, I took a photograph of white blossoms just because they reminded me of those Hostess Sno-balls (round twinkies covered with shredded coconut) you get at 7-11, and then I wanted a Sno-ball really bad.

All in all: A+(+).