Mister Monty-Pants

Jessie was snapping some pictures of himself today. He's settled into living in this livingroom as opposed to that livingroom. He's started to shed out his summer coat for a winter one so he's looking a little patchy right now, but these turned out great.

"mont ... mont"

Oh Olympia, You Crazy Thing You....

As of this morning, I'm officially moved home in Corbett, Oregon soon to be Sandy, Oregon (in a month or so). I woke up this morning in my tiny tiny little bedroom, so that's what I'm basing this "official" business on. Now, my new room isn’t tiny in the way it was constructed, but because it is CRAMMED FULL of boxes of things left over from my parents’ move here. So my room has a full sized bed with about 1 foot of walking space from the door along one side and that’s it. The rest consists of this looming wall of cardboard… heavy heavy cardboard. I’m working on reorganizing it a little, I did manage to free up about a three foot by two foot space in the closet to cram some of my clothes in. The rest, as with a great deal of my things from Oly., will be put in storage in the new house for the next month. Ah well…

What started this post was not the move itself, but the fact that I’m going to miss Olympia and all of its crazy ways. For example, The Hall of the Woods. I didn’t post about this before because I forgot and after a while it didn’t seem THAT crazy, but thinking back on it, it was a little exotic. About a week or so ago I got a call from Bed and Star about going to a performance-artish-thing. I wasn’t doing anything and this was before Katherine and Peter got back so I’d been hanging out at the house with Monty embroidering all day, every day, PLUS these tend to turn into mini-adventures which are always fun. We decide to go. We left late, arrived late but everything started REALLY late. Then again, I don’t think it counts as late if everyone’s running on this crazy thing called “Olympia Time” which means everything is delayed by at least an hour. So really, they were right on time. But let me back up a little.

We’re driving to this place called the Hall of the Woods, which is where Missoula Oblongata was scheduled to perform (late). We’re driving… and driving and driving. It’s not far but everything is getting more rural and shady the further out we get. Finally, we wind up in this woodsy area when all of the sudden this old purple-ish barn looms up on our left. “Hey guys… I think that was it.” And it was. It’s this crazy purple barn with little lights hanging from the porch and a couple of Greeners hanging around smoking in the front. It’s getting dusky and we pull around to the side and park at the end between an old rickety truck and some blackberries. The four of us get out and look at each other. Behind the barn is a canoe that’s being worked on, there’s a wild-looking garden in front of the car and then on the other side of the truck is a folding table FULL of large bones. Like deer sized. Ben grabs a chunk of vertebra about an inch-and-a-half tall (that’s definitely big enough to be a deer… or something) and holds it up “Cool! Oh… these are a lot of bones!” There’s a lot of enthusiasm in that sentence, and all I can do is quietly hum that banjo music while I size up the mountain of bones, trying to estimate how many critters it took to fill it up. We walk around to the front and squeeze past the Greeners debating something or other, onto the porch and into the barn.

The barn, it turns out, looks like someone lives there. You walk in and it’s a huge, semi-finished space. The roof is mostly a series of huge tarps with some sort of insulation, there’s some furniture, a booth from a diner or something to the side and a giant parachute hanging from the ceiling. The parachute is glowing and looks a bit like a jelly fish with a light stuffed inside. There’s a kitchen and above the kitchen a loft-bedroom area. There are Greeners sprawled out across a couple of couches and there’s a tv with it’s insides yanked out to make room for a fern. We sit down at the diner-booth beause Star’s found a kitty there which needs an intense amount of cuddling.

(Cuddle cuddle)

While we’re waiting for things to happen we watch a couple of kids play with a pretty cute muttly-dog. The kids are wearing all sorts of clothes that look like they’ve been pulled out of a costume chest. Ones in footie pj’s (and it looks like he might just live in them), and another is wearing a peasant blouse, long skirt and bright red shoes. They look like they’re having fun but between them and the dog (which later turns into six muttly dogs) everything still feels a little sketch. Finally the music starts and then Oblongata goes on. It was a neat little three-person performance involving themes like: math, fortune cookies, eggs from space, astronomy, relationships… etc. Afterwards Star bought this print of people you could call around the U.S. who are experts on random things. You could call them anytime and ask them any question (as long as it pertains to their subjects) and just be a kooky Greener whenever you felt like it. As we pulled away from the pile of bones and the growing number of happy Greeners, dogs and children I felt pretty good about the way things are again. In that little bubble, life was good. If only movies and books wouldn’t tell me otherwise. Something tells me it would be harder to find a Missoula Oblongata outside of Oly.

Guess Who's a Graduatory Lady!

This one!

Ka-CHING! Jessie graduated today from Hockinson High School (and I think we'll all be happy to never have to set foot back in that building again).
Monty... pooped from an entirely stressful day of napping.
Jessie, Dad and Willow in a last minute attempt at photos before we had to hustle the hour commute back to the high school.
All we, standing in the drive.
Poppi, Mom, Nea Nea and Jessie.

Janet and Poppi
Nea Nea
Emma surprised that the five millionth time she asked when Jessie was going to get up was actually the right time.

Jessie, doing the walk.

Kyle, Jessie and Chris afterwards.
It was hot and sweaty crammed into that gym but nice outside. Yuck.
Dad, taking a picture of me taking a picture. But his version includes the sweet iPhone. This ridiculousness is only enhanced by the iPhone's myserious powers (the same powers that keep Evan alive and RULER OF THE UNIVERSE... and all things Mac-ish).

Poppi!
Mummy.
Jessie and Chris.

Awwww.....

Joyce and Dad. Nea Nea claims that Joyce, Dad and I all have the same nose but I guess we come by it honestly.
Jessie, leaving the Hockinson parkinglot for the last time. SWEET!

More to come tomorrow after the graduation paaarrrtay!

Brick Walls and Waterfalls

... is a terrible song but we did go visit some waterfalls today so it seems mildly appropriate. Dharyll and I drove down the Columbia River Historic Highway which runs near mom and dad's house. We did a little hiking, listened to some music and saw some sturgeon.

The view of the Columbia Gorge from the Vista House.
Mossy guard rails along the highway. Back in 1908 there was no moss. But now there is. These must have aged since 1908.
This is..... probably Latourell falls. It might not be though. It's really hard to keep them straight since they all look like falling water.
ROCKS. I liked standing right up against them and watching water drops fall very slowly towards my face.
This is..... perhaps the same waterfall from earlier. I'm not sure. It had all this bright yellow moss or lichen on the rocks along the side of it. There's a little Dharyll in the corner, sort of like Where's Waldo.
Ok, this one is Horsetail falls. I know because I'm taking this picture from inside a cave behind the falls.
Ditto.
Same here.
This is a second water fall that comes off of Horestail falls further down by the parking lot.
STURGEON! We wound up at the Bonneville Dam fish hatchery. And they have STURGEON! And rainbow trout, but the sturgeon are ten times cooler. They can get up to 25 feet long and weigh more than 1,500 pounds.

I remember these guys from when I was little, they might even be the same fish.