Writer's Notes: Purpose

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I have been casting about for a while, seeking purpose with my fiction writing.  I've attempted two novels, casting both aside, and reset my purpose toward a concept I believe has merit, has value.  When I initially conceived myself as a writer, I did so with the idea that I would be a "serious literary author."  I put it in quotes because I've come to realize what a mental construct that is, what a fabrication of identity.  What I want is to write striking prose that is close to what I like to read.

So, what is that?

I've found that I really enjoy the worlds of sci-fi and fantasy.  

Within some literary communities, the worlds of sci-fi and fantasy get labeled under the banner of "genre writing."  At times, genre writing can be looked down upon, seen as subservient to the literary scene.  I'm slowly realizing that I don't care.  I didn't become a writer to serve the needs of ego and arbitrary judgments about genre.  I became a writer to birth the stories that dwell inside of me.  As such, I need to listen to the voices that dwell inside of me and write like the authors who inspire me, who draw me along through their pages effortlessly.

Much of the anxiety that surrounds this issue is due to insecurity.  My own.  I've been holding on to an outdated conception of myself as artist, to an identity that was founded before I knew myself through years of practicing craft.  Because I have spent so much time dwelling on this issue, fighting against what I now see as my plain desire, I am slowly peeling past the layers of insecurity and settling in to a writing practice that is sustainable and passion-fueled.  

It is not an end spot I'm facing now, but a new beginning.  I have been reading a lot of books that inspire me lately, finding voices like mine in the larger publishing world, and I take great comfort in that.  I've been working on a concept for some time, finding tools that will help me advance my idea (You might remember a recent post about the book Wonderbook).  Slowly but surely, I'll take my first tentative steps into this new world I've begun building, and I hope the process is a fulfilling one.  I've dwelt upon these concepts for a while now and it is time to birth it.  

It's going to be a long and tough road, but I think I have the wherewithal to navigate it now.  The blog has been a soothing presence, a place where I can work past a lot of things that normally block me up, and I appreciate you, my readers, for helping me to find that I have a voice that can work for audiences.  In addition to the larger fiction project, I've also started to build a concept of how this blog can, for me, develop into a larger nonfiction project.  

The creative juices are flowing; inspiration has landed, and now it is time to practice the old "butt-in-seat" method of writing.  This method is about coming to the computer whether or not inspiration has taken residence in my office.  It is not about flashes of brilliance provided by the muse, but about the long and steady hours of dedication it takes in order to accomplish a dream.

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Brenda Ueland, in her essay "Everyone is Talented, Original and Has Something Important to Say", says, "Think of how many times Kreisler has practiced trills.  If you will write as many words as Kreisler has practiced trills I prophesy that you will win the Nobel Prize in ten years."  I don't care about the accolades of the Nobel Prize, but I get Euland's point.  Writing, and writing well, is about practice, about long hours of dedication to the craft, the skill, and I'm ready to put the hours in.  Ueland's essay may be about writing, but I would say it is more encouragement to let go and take a risk.  What a gift she left us.

Promisary-Note: Fatherly Fashonista

"Clothes make the man."

"Dress for the job you want, not the job you have."

Or, to quote the hilarious Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother, "Suit up!"

This week's promise is all about appearances in a way, but also not.  Fashion and the choices we make in how we present ourselves has a big effect on a person, whether they like to admit it or not.  This week's promise is an attempt to live a little "classier" that I normally do, to take some extra care and pay some extra attention to how I present myself.

I am born and raised in the American West, which is quite possibly one of the most casual places on earth.  As such, I am a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy.  I'm all fleece jackets and sandals, shorts and baseball hats.  I love that kind of attire.  I feel at home in it, but that doesn't mean I have to do it all the time.

In preparation for this week's promise, I took some time out of my day to actually break out the ironing board and iron some of my shirts for the week.

Dressing up is about care and attention to detail.  I work in pretty casual environments, so it isn't always going to be about suits this week.  Can you imagine me serving burgers and fries in my best suit?  I don't think so.  Because of this, I'm going to have to consider what it means in all kinds of separate situations.  At school I can wear my suit, or a sportcoat, but that won't do in other situations.

So, this week has me considering fashion and how it changes the way I move through the world.  I'll keep you posted.  I'm getting geared up and ready to go.

Personal Note: Moving Past Grief

I've lost a lot of people over my lifetime.  It's the perils of living in a small town, I guess.  I've attended a lot of funerals, officiated a handful more, and dealt with grief both as a person trying to bring comfort to others and as the mourner.  It's a formidable life experience to deal with the nearness of death, to see someone close to you slip past the veil of life and into the "after," whatever your conception may be here.

Recently, I've dealt with a lot of this and had to preside over the services of those close to me.  Granted, they were people of a generation older than me, which allows me the distance of relative "youth."  It allows me the cool remove of "I have time," but that too is a lie, a trick of the mind to push away the reality of death.  So, lately, I've been thinking a lot about what comes next, what survives death for the living?  The answer to this is Hope.  Yep, captial "H" Hope is what I land on.  But where does one find it in the midst of darkness, in the throes of depression?  The answer is simple.

It is everywhere.

For the depressed and grieving, this may appear to be a snide remark, a flippant response by someone who doesn't understand the depths of his/her personal pain.  I know. I've been there.  As a young man, I dealt with a lot of darkness, a lot of personal pain, and it  effected me deeply.  It may be that those early experience wore against my heart like an ill-fitting shoe, leaving a callused patch of skin that now protects it, but I don't think so.  It is my firmly held belief that I chose my way out.  I chose the path I wanted to take out of the darkness and I've been becoming a better man ever since.

Hope is everywhere, but it is a matter of choosing.  Many people in the throes of grief plunge themselves backwards into the river of time.  They exist on the edge of memory, looking backwards toward the past, and because of this they are unable to sometimes experience the pleasures of the present, the promise of the future.  One way is to choose to turn your gaze.  This is a Herculean effort at first.  Shifting one's gaze toward the present, toward the future, sometimes feels like a treacherous act, an abandonment of the person we love, but it is far from that.  I've been reading the book "Dreams of Gods and Monsters" lately, the final book in a trilogy, and two of the characters keep bandying around the idea that the dead do not want vengeance from their survivors.  The survivors are the ones who want vengeance.  This caused me to think about my recent experiences with grief and some grievers who are close to me.

Photo courtesy of Linda Thomas

Here's my revision of the idea.  The dead do not want our tears, our grief.  They want our fond memories, a place in our hearts, and our enduring love, but, more than anything, they want our continued happiness.  In all of my experience with death, I've never met a dying soul who wanted anything more than that last piece.  I've lost grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, classmates, mentors, etc.  In all of those experiences, I've never known a one who wanted their loved ones to endure the prolonged pain that is grief.  Not one.

So, how do we find the hope?  How do we move past this stagnation of forward movement, of minutes ticking away from our own lives?  We choose to...tentatively at first.  We venture outside ourselves and choose to have one good visit.  One good afternoon with your child, your grandchild, a friend, a loved one of any stripe.  We get outside of ourselves and we invest in another.  This, for me, has often been the easiest way to move past grief.  Give yourself fully to another.  Invest in them, give them your time, attention, and help them to navigate whatever troubles they may be experiencing.  When I do this, when I reach out into my community, into my social circles, I typically get swept up into a current that draws me forward.

Photo courtesy of Jodi Sunitsch

As I get swept away, I begin to make connections to things outside of myself and my grief.  I begin to learn and discover new things.  I get surprised, which causes me to emit a bark of a laugh, a thing which is also a surprise and can sometimes set me backwards in my momentum because I feel that sense of shame that I am rediscovering joy in the face of my grief.  But, one laugh typically leads to another, which leads to another.  A friends laugh will remind me of my lost loved one, or something they say will stir a memory in me, and it will soon not be tainted with a sense of shame or guilt, but it will remind me that my loved ones would have sat right by me given the chance and they would have laughed just as long, or just as loud as I did.

Soon, my emotions shift from lamentations to celebrations.  When I remember my loved ones, I remember them fondly, which is usually accompanied by a story, and I start to tell the stories.  In this way, my loved ones get what they want, what I stated earlier.  They get my fond memories, they get a place in my heart, and they get my love.  In the end, I also get something too.  I get a new strength, a new way of moving forward, a new understanding of the beautiful bittersweet majesty that is a lived life.  I get this because they left me.  I get this because they loved me.  I get this because I loved them back, and I wouldn't trade that for any other material gift anyone could give me.

In this way, our grief is a gift, for it tempers us into a stronger version of ourselves, and that strength is built directly upon the life and memories of the people we had the courage and blessing enough to love.

Book Notes: The Magicians

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Lev Grossman's  fantasy epic The Magicians wasn't the book I read in a week.  In fact, I read the sequel The Magican King as my book last week, but I wanted to go back to the original in terms of providing a review.  It'll provide people with a better jumping on point for their own reading, and I think the germ of everything that is awesome about The Magician King is to be found in that first book.

The Magicians is a book about, you guessed it, magicians.  Quentin Coldwater is the main character of the book, and he begins as a regular kid on the streets of New York City.  He's on his way to an interview for college when his whole life changes.  Enter magic.  The rest of the novel, and the subsequent sequels, unfolds from this moment, and much of the second book hinges on the repercussions of these early pages.  

For those of you who are familiar with Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the references and threads that weave throughout this book.  While The Magicians calls its land Fillory instead of Narnia, and it was ruled by four English schoolchildren named the Chatwins instead of the Pevensies, Grossman has found a way to reinvent many of the tropes that worked its way through those books.  

Grossman's magic makes the book.  His conceptions and conjurings feel gritty and grounded, even as the laws of physics bend in fanciful ways.  Pain and endurance infiltrate magic throughout the novel, and the lessons learned by Quentin and his friends exceeds lessons in spellcasting and reside more in real character lessons.  Magic does not come easy, and the young students find their spirits and character tested in a way that all great literature captures.  The character development never falters throughout the novel, and readers will find themselves rooting not just for Quentin, but the rest of the cast as well.  

While this book is billed as a "coming-of-age" novel, its story reads more like a "coming alive" novel.  It's about how the spirit survives modern trials, and Grossman's prose elevates all of the critical character moments in real and exciting ways.  The apathetic Quentin Coldwater and his fellow young adults feel real, but never quite lapse into the overly whiny characters that sometimes plague novels about this age group.  Quentin is a problematic character, one plagued with a sense of self-doubt, but his journey throughout the first book take him to a satsifying resolution that doesn't "solve" his problematic aspects, but simply move him to a new status quo that will prove to be equally problematic in the next books.  

For lovers of Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter, this book is a must read.  It's a fantastic book about magic and the price one pays to wield it.  It attacks more adult themes than either of those other series manage to tackle, and it is better for it.  The Magicians was one of my favorite reads of the last year.  I was so thoroughly pleased with the book that I ran to pick up the sequel.  Now I am in the uncomfortable position of waiting to pick up the third and final book of the trilogy.  It's a wait I will endure, for if the first two books are any indication of Grossman's gifts, then I will be rewarded for my patience.  

Promise-ary note: You and Me Days

In my house, we have a tradition of "You and Me" days.  These are days dedicated to Shea.  My promise for the week was to spend some dedicated time with my daughter.  It may sound ridiculous to have to promise this, or to give it such a finite and specific time frame, but in the modern life, it is easy to lose track of yourself and your attention.  As such, I liked putting a specific time frame on it, a way of keeping myself accountable.

Last Friday was a free day for Shea.  Her school observes Good Friday, so she her day, and mine, were free to do what we wanted.  She spent the night at her grandparents house the night before, so Tracy and I could go experience the awesome-ness that was "Captain America: The Winter Soldier".  I promised her that I would pick her up at 11 after I got some work done and the "You and Me" day would begin.

When I arrived at the in-laws house, she was ready to go!  She was excited to have me all to herself, and I was excited too.  She quickly got dressed, combed her hair, and literally dragged me along to the truck as we waved goodbye to her grandparents over our shoulders.  The day had begun.

First stop, Red Robin for a quick bite of lunch.  Shea had eaten a late breakfast, so she wasn't hungry, but I hadn't eaten a thing.  As a compromise for being patient while I ate, She scored this:

Strawberry milkshake deliciousness

She barely drank any of it, claiming it was too sweet.  Shea doesn't get a lot of sugar, so things like this can kind of be an overload.  While we sat in the booth, Shea told me about school, made up stories about the different decorations around the restaurant, and simply caught me up on her life.  She was on OUTPUT!  I don't think she stopped talking the whole time we were there.  It was nice to hear about her friends, how she was getting along at school, and just listening to how big she is getting.  She's beginning to have a sense of fairness-unfairness about the world, and some of those distinctions bother her at times.

After lunch, we were off to the Family Fun Center in Wilsonville.  Tracy, Shea, and I have been here a couple of times now.  We've celebrated birthdays with Shea's friends and just popped in as a family for a little bit of mini-golf.  It's a great place to hang and play if it isn't too busy.

Because she's been there a couple of times, Shea knew exactly what she wanted to do.  She shot across the arcade the minute we were inside the doors and ran to the bowling game she loves so much.

Ready for some frames!

I made a concerted effort to keep my phone in my pocket pretty much the whole time we were there (beyond snapping a picture or two).  We played arcade games, climbed through the KidZone play structure, shot some mini-golf, and played a wall-sized version of Connect Four, which was a big hit for her.  What surprised me was how good she'd gotten at the game.  She didn't need any encouragement from me on where to place her pieces.  She's grasping concepts and strategies more and more all the time.

While the point of all of this is to simply make myself available to Shea, I reap a ton of rewards as well.  When I give dedicated time to her in unusual environments, then I get to see her capacities in a whole new light.  My little girl is growing up fast, and her development is only accelerating.  I was amazed at how social and outgoing she was with other kids in the KidZone.  She was especially sensitive to the little kids, making sure they were doing okay and giving up her turn on slides and things so that they could go first.

While mini-golf was more a comedy of errors than anything else, I can see her working her body in new and interesting ways, which is a blessing for a father who has watched her go through years of physical and occupational therapy.

Fore!

She was crushing the ball, and starting to get a sense of form down (when she wasn't running after the ball and smacking it willy-nilly!).

More than anything else, I walked away from the day realizing how much more of a conversational partner she is these days.  She tracks stories really well, remembering interesting details and pieces of dialogue.  She has a sense of social justice, or fairness, that exceeds anything I think I was aware of at that age.  There are times when I wonder if this is because she is slightly "different" from the other kids, has other challenges, and so she sees the world in a way I don't fully understand.

When we got in the truck after the Fun Center, she turned to me and said, "Can we have another You and Me day?  This is only our first one this year."  It simultaneously thrilled me and broke my heart.  I thrilled at the thought that my daughter loves having this time together, that she seeks it out, and isn't growing up too fast.  It breaks my heart because it is April.  It is April and I haven't made the special effort to organize a day where I make her feel special too.  I'm with her a lot.  We are together as a family a lot; it isn't that she doesn't have time with me.  It is that I haven't made that special and concerted effort to carve out a space for her that is unique, special, and, above all else, fun.

I'm going to work harder to find my way to her, to find the space in my days to take her to the park, to take her on a hike, to hit up the zoo.  You and Me days are not about extravagance or spectacle; they are about making sure that one of the most special people in my life knows that they are.

In the days that followed, Shea dropped a couple of heart bombs on me.  She said, "Do you know what I love the most about you?  That you are nice and kind to everyone." Heart palpitations nearly killed me.  This was followed a couple of days later by, "I love you, daddy.  I just wanted you to know that."  We were driving to school and it came out of her completely unprompted, just a spontaneous expression of her affection.  This closeness, this bond of affection, is built on You and Me days.  It's built on the idea that love is paying attention.  If you love something, you pay attention to it.  Simple as that.  I need to make sure she feels my attention.  If she does, then she'll never doubt my love.

I wonder what we'll do next?

Promise-ary Note: Reading and my new assignment

I've been working toward finishing the book "The Magician King" by Lev Grossman for my promise last week.  I've made good progress, but I'm not going to make it in my week time frame.  I'll need an extra day or two to get it done.  When I get done, I'll be posting a review of the book.  The first book was one of my favorites of last year, so I have high expectations for this sequel.

In the meantime, I've chosen my new promise for the coming week, and I've also had a chance to complete it already.

I'm excited to report my time with Shea, with photos, but I'll save that for a later post.  It's been fun having a "You and Me" day like she and I used to always share.  More on that later.

Personal Note: Turning It Off

We all have our "it."  For me, it appears to be work.  I am a worker born and bred.  I work a lot.  I work for money AND I work for self-satisfaction.  Because of this, I sometimes have a hard time "turning it off" and focusing on other things.  This can lead to dysfunction in other areas of my life, whether it be my relationships, my health, or my free time.

I was, of course, working today, looking up the relationship of Hector and Achilles from the Trojan War because there was a reference to it in my students' reading assignment. As a result of looking up these mythic heroes, I landed on a post on a Christian website by Gene Veith as he discussed the two heroes in relationship to an article by Mark Edmundson entitled "Do Sports Build Character?" The two men used the myth of Hector and Achilles to illuminate different aspects of character, different aspects of what it means to be human, and I found myself sliding down the internet rabbit hole and becoming obsessed with an idea that led to a click here, a website there, and eventually a detour into my own blog.

The point is this, and it comes from Mark Edmundson himself, "...what is most appealing about Hector—and about a certain kind of athlete and warrior. Hector can turn it off. He can stop being the manslayer that he needs to be out on the windy plains of Troy and become a humane husband and father. The scene shows him in his dual nature—warrior and man of thought and feeling. In a sense, he is the figure that every fighter and athlete should emulate. He is the Navy Seal or Green Beret who would never kill a prisoner, the fearless fighter who could never harm a woman or a child. In the symbolic world of sports, where the horrors and the triumphs of combat are only mimicked, he is the one who comports himself with extreme gentleness off the field, who never speaks ill of an opponent, who never complains, never whines."  

Much of what I obsess about in my personal life is this exact dynamic.  How do I ambitiously pursue the things I want in life while still being a "man of thought and feeling"?  How do I create a life that is stable and loving for my family and friends while still maintaining my teeth-bared, no-holds-barred, I'm-going-to-get-mine attitude toward my writing and my career?  The answer is simple.  I can be both things.  I am allowed to be both things.  These are not aspects that are necessarily in conflict with each other, but they are aspects of being a person that need to be "activated" in their appropriate times and places.  

I can be Hector the warrior and I can be Hector the father.  My daughter will learn from seeing both sides of me.  She will come to understand tenderness, but she will also understand strength, but, most importantly, she'll come to know that there is a time and a place for each of them.

Promise-ary Note: Homemade Erotica (Not Really)

A couple of weeks ago, I drew a promise that required that I develop further intimacy with my wife.  While this week's promise didn't exactly ask the same thing of me, I believe it was a pleasant side effect of the task.  My task was to...

The problem with my drawn task was that we had just cleaned the house a couple of days before, so it was relatively clean and neat.  So, what is a guy to do?  Well, if we extend the definition of "house" to include the property surrounding the house, then there are plenty of things I can do to help out and take some of the load off my wife.  

I had recently had a conversation with a friend, and they brought up a book they saw called, "Porn for Women."  The book was filled with pictures of men engaged in housekeeping chores.  I decided to take some liberties with the concept and have a photo shoot of my own.  Some of the photo credits belong to Shea, as she helped me snap a couple of photos.

Helping with the laundry.

Man wields toilet brush.

Bright and shiny!

Getting ready to mow!

Almost done!

Making time to help around the house does wonders for my relationship with my wife, but it also does wonders for me.  When I know things are done, crossed off the to-do list, then I am able to relax and enjoy myself around the house.  I don't have reoccurring nagging thoughts that seem to keep me up at night.   I don't have a sense of guilt and shame for not getting those things done.  

I'm a busy dude.  I don't say that as a means of excuse, but rather as a way of understanding the reason why I have such strong feelings about helping around the house.  I have a myriad of commitments that keep me away from the house, and so when I don't make time to help out around the house, then I tend to feel poorly about myself and my relationships.  I feel like my obligations are not met, so I have to make sure to dedicate time to engaging at home.  

While it may seem small and insignificant to some, it is a big deal for me because if I can't help around the house, then the workload falls squarely on my wife's shoulders.  In the midst of working the two jobs, writing, and other familial/social commitments, my responsibility lies firmly at home, and, like most things, I have to find a way to have a work/life balance.  

This week's task reminded me of my commitment to home and family, not just emotionally and spiritually, but physically, through my actions.  It is one more way I need to be present in my life.

Next week's task:

Promise-ary Post: Dropping off the Grid

My latest promise was to be a little selfish and drop off the grid.  This proved a little harder than I thought.  First, in order to drop off the grid, I needed to ensure that all of my responsibilities were done for the week.  I caught up on grading, made sure my family was good, and that the restaurant didn't have any emergencies.  When all was said and done, I was able to turn my phone off and head to Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

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While I was in the theater, my phone buzzed twice.  Once was a call from my wife and one was a call from the owner of the restaurant where I work.  As much as I wanted to get off the grid, my life wasn't letting me.  As a result, I've taken the last two weeks to get away from the internet, the blog, and social media as a whole.  I peeked in here and there, but I did not engage with it on the level I normally do.

What did I learn from this?

Well, I learned it is my natural state to be "unplugged."  I love being untethered from the multiple avenues of stimuli that bombard me every day.  I've kept up with my promises, kept engaged with work and with family, and I haven't noticed a large negative side to the "loss" of my electronic life.  It puts things into perspective for me and I feel like I may try and find other opportunities to unplug in the near future.  The weeks I've been offline have been fulfilling ones and I've used the time to do some fun things with family and friends.

It's not a bad thing to wean ourselves off our devices every now and then.

As I was working on putting this post together and looking at ways in which I could frame it, I found this post from a blogger in Australia.  While I don't agree with the entire breakdown of the post, I do find much of what she has to say enlightening.

The promise post that followed "dropping off the grid" was to clean the house.  Domestic work leads to domestic bliss, right?

Promise-ary Note: The New Promise

This weeks promise is about disappearing, about being off the grid and allowing my time to be my own.  I serve a lot of roles in my life, and it takes up a lot of my time, so disappearing is rarely an option.  I'm off to serve my own needs for a bit.

Promise-ary Note: My Recipe for Time Together

Last week's promise presented the challenge of promoting intimacy with my wife.  What this meant to me is that I needed dedicated time with Tracy, time where the two of us could simply hang out, chat,relax a little and remember why we work together as a couple.  The promise wasn't a move against a deterioration in the relationship, but it was meant to be an affirmation of sorts.  With our schedules, it is hard at times to find time that is dedicated solely to the two of us.  Work, parenting, obligations to family and friends often mean that our alone time is diminished.  With this being true, I decided to create a simple day where Tracy and I  got to spend time enjoying each other's company.  What's the recipe?  Well, here you got?

Add 1 Cup Forethought: I wanted to create a special day for Tracy.  The best way to do this is to plan in advance.  As such, I put a couple of things in place in advance.  I searched on Groupon  for a restaurant where the two of us could have a nice meal together.  I made reservations for seven so we didn't have to rush either.

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Groupon had a deal for Amadeus Restaurant in Milwaukie.  They bill themselves as the "Most Romantic Restaurant in Portland."  While I might quibble about that specific detail, it is a lovely restaurant with white linens and a menu full of "old school" German/Austrian cuisine (aka lots of rich sauces).  The whole day was going to use our dinner reservations as a destination, a final landing point of our day together.  With this piece in place, I was able to assemble the rest of the ingredients that were necessary for a day dedicated to one's spouse.

For a Light Texture to the Day, Add a Heavy Dose of Unstructured Time: When planning a day like this, it is really easy to overload the day with different events.  I didn't want to do that.  I wanted our time together to be relaxing and fun.  As such, Tracy and I started off our childless day on the couch under a down comforter sipping coffee for about an hour or so.  I didn't rush to get her out the door, but rather spent the morning relaxing and getting ready for what was coming next.  It was serene and peaceful and intimate. Everything I'd hoped for from the day.

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After that, we needed to get some fuel in our bodies in order to start the day off right.  I didn't want to spend too much time on brunch, so we kept it super simple with some authentic tacos and lengua burritos at Super Torta in Oregon City.  This quaint little restaurant serves some of the best food around.  While it may not look like much, this business has their food down to a science.  It is a must try if you are in Oregon City.

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After filling our bodies with delicious Mexican food and hot sauce, we set off for Portland's Saturday Market.  Tracy and I do best when we are simply free to chat and converse in casual environments, and Saturday Market is a great place to people watch, browse, and simply spend some time in the sun.  We walked almost the entire market, stopping here and there, and simply enjoying each other's company.  When we got done with the market, we didn't want the browsing to end, so we headed up to Northwest 23rd for some more walking, shopping, and people watching.

When we arrived, we were met with this tragic young panhandler.

Keepin' Portland Weird, Ariel

Northwest 23rd Street is a hip little neighborhood filled with shops, restaurants, and, when it is the first really sunny day in the Spring in Portland, gobs of people.  We marched up and down the sidewalks, peeking in windows, chatting each other up, and simply having a good time laughing with each other.

While I had planned the trip to Saturday Market, 23rd was an unscheduled stop.  This was okay because I hadn't packed the day full of activities for us to do.  Instead, we went where the day took us, and the day took us to Northwest 23rd and this crazy fun hat shop: Goorin Brothers.  I even wound up pushing my boundaries a bit and scoring these two new hats.

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For Bubbly Conversation, Add Cocktails and Good Food: After all that walking, Tracy and I were thirsty, so we made a pit stop in the Nob Hill Bar and Grill.  After a quick cocktail that threatened to melt Tracy's face off, we hit the road from NW 23rd in search of somewhere a little quieter.  We wound up further down in the Pearl District in a little place called Piattino.

Meat and Cheese Plate at Piattino

This restaurant was probably our favorite stop of the day, had it not been for a couple of weird interactions with the patrons, but the cocktails were amazing and the food was too.  We spent our time talking over cocktails and reconnecting in general.

All in all, the day was a great one and I enjoyed having some private time with my wife.  We needed a little dose of grown up time.  I need to make the time to do these sorts of things with my wife in order to make sure that we are grounded and connected.  I like doing things like this for her.  It's nice to remind her that I think she is special and she's deserving of my undivided attention.

Mission accomplished!

Father Notes: Raw Egg Shea

As a parent, you have to allow your children to experiment. At dinner the other night, Shea decided to tell us all the things she would eat raw.  Beef, chicken, pretty much any kind of birds, but not dogs or cats, or pretty much any other animal that could be deemed "cute."

Tracy and I were quizzing her back and forth when Tracy said, "Would you eat a raw egg?"  Shea didn't have to think about it for long.  She said, "Yes."  I immediately got up from the kitchen table, got a raw egg out of the fridge, and held it up for her.

"You would eat this?" I asked.

"Yes," Shea said with absolute certainty.

"Do you want to eat it?"

"Yes," she said.

"If I crack this egg, then you have to eat it," I replied.  Tracy sat there watching the give and take, nodding.

"Ok," Shea said.  I cracked the egg.

This is what followed:

She was a trooper about the whole thing, not backing down from the challenge.  I don't think she'll be asking for any raw eggs in the future, but I was proud of her for following through on her word.  She did a great job.

Some people wouldn't feed their kid the raw egg.  They'd worry about an uncooked egg making their kid sick, but what is life without a little risk.  She wouldn't get that ill.  Plus, it was pure comedy watching her choke that thing back.  "I think I'm gonna barf" is my favorite part.  I can't wait to show her this when she is in her teens.

Here's the final shot: