2 July 2011

Seattle

My left scapula is tender and the same can be said for my hamstring, thanks to a morning of rolling paint on the walls of our nearly empty condominium.  It’s a good thing we had help from a friend of a friend for the cut work or I undoubtedly wouldn’t be able to uncramp my hands enough to type.  We have started a new project – a domestic one, clearly out of character for us – to freshen up Gina’s condo.  This is because running around re-connecting with friends and family, picking up boxes out of storage, unpacking our Australia shipment, prepping for our upcoming European bike tour, and just generally going through the motions and emotions of re-entry isn’t enough to do.  Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.  After three years of being a rental, I suppose it’s time for a little cosmetic cleanup.

So our re-entry thus far, which is really only a partial re-entry given our summer plans, has been mostly spectacularly pleasing.  We have been embraced by friends and family who have plied us with celebratory drinks and dinners and perhaps best of all, beds to sleep in.  Mother Nature has greeted us with sunny skies and salty air and the first 80 degree day of the year.  Seattle has given us back that feeling of home, of fitting in with our Pacific Northwest attitudes and wardrobes, even if most of the latter is still packed in those boxes sitting draped in dropcloths in the center of the livingroom.  It’s good to be back, a good feeling to be home among the familiar tinged with the new, new places and people and ideas to explore as though we haven’t been here before.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t some people and places (and little furry dogs) that we miss back in the Southern Hemisphere, that we think of with fond smiles and memories of good times and good stories and let’s be honest, good wine.  And it isn’t to say that we haven’t had a moment or two of feeling as though the adventure has sadly ended, even though we know that it continues on as long as we believe in it and strive to make it happen in whatever format suits the moment.  Rolling a wall may not be quite the adventure I’ve grown accustomed to, but I know that it’s a means to an end, one that supports that lifestyle of the new and the fresh and the different splashed across that background of the fond and familiar.  That’s worth a few aches and pains.