POSTCARD FROM NEWPORT

Our room with a view

We hit the wall and decided to take a trip to the ocean, which I miss dearly. With great purpose, we made plans to travel to Newport, OR for a few days of rest, solitude and beach walking if I can get up the gumption.

We chose Newport because of the restaurant, Local Ocean. As of this date, it is our favorite seafood restaurant in our new state of being. Looking over the harbor which is filled with working boats and barking seals, we split a martini and crab cake, a salad, and a seafood stew. It did not disappoint.

This past week has been another week of opening up boxes to retrieve what we schlepped up here. Once opened, the contents were freed from their bubble-wrap and loose papers and inspected. Much was then hauled off to Goodwill because in some cases, the items in the boxes duplicated what we had in our skinny house. Then a decision was made as to which things would be kept. And that is how it has been going. It is dog work and it helps well up those thoughts like, “What were we thinking?” Or, “Why did we buy all this stuff?” And of course, kicking ones butt was in order. It is hard to realize how much I am addicted to shopping. During Covid, it was my pastime. And before then too.

Our “living” room in the skinny house. This room had 5 rows of boxes, 5 boxes high before we attacked it.

Like the look of the book

A book of plates

Two of the boxes we lugged up here were filled with old books that I have been custodian to for years, handed down through the generations, I have been keeping this books. For what? It is a grand example of fearing to part with things my elders left behind. Five volumes of Ancient History books with one full book of “plates”, plates being pictures of antiquities. Rationalizing that these books might be valuable, kept me from defrocking the tomes from my bookcase. I kept them for decades. They were, after all, from Cambridge. Arriving in Portland, I reached out to three bookstores that claim to deal in old books and my feedback from Powells was to bring them in…but warning me of their appeal, “Someone might find them of interest” thereby alerting me to the vagrancy of supply and demand in our capitalist system. Another bookstore suggested I give them to Goodwill. So much for value. So the plan has been hatched to give them to Goodwill. Good riddance I say. You books have had your way with me for far too long. Begone with you…

And that is one example.

Of course, many of the things we brought here are not duplicated in the skinny house, so for those things a space must be created. Oh, my. Have any of you played Connections in the NYTimes where they give you 16 words and you have to decide what four words have in common and you do that four times. If you make a mistake, it is strike one and you have three chances then to get four groups of words that have something in common etc. Well, that reminds me of what I’m doing in real life as I unpack and assess and compare and contrast.

So on and on it goes until the inevitable crack-up occurs asI sit for a glass of water. And when I sit for a glass of water, I yearn for the ocean.

Rayman tries to be helpful but he can’t lift more than ten pounds and he can’t drive yet following his pacemaker placement in his chest last month. He, after all, is not the one that bought the portable salt and pepper grinders that fit neatly in a brown leather pouch (about 4 inches in height) that I whipped out at Local Ocean last night. No, his purchases fall into the categories of wine and clothes. The wine grew more valuable because we had five cases sent up through a company that does such things at the price of around $650. But what was the choice? No other plan to move them worked so we forked out the big buck for the move. Thank you Mary Kay and Jay for helping us.

The salt and the pepper grinders had been lost for years and yet because of moving, they were discovered. A slight smile parts my lips now. It is a hoot. And there are plenty of other examples of conspicuous consumption but I will stop with the grinders, as how can I improve my own point?

Today, we may do nothing. Or something. We are resting. Beau is with us providing the needed laughs and giggles as he licks his chops and sniffs all things around him. His influence cannot be overstated.

Before we left Portland, I wandered the neighborhood with Beau for his morning walk. Here are some pictures of spring teasing us. Whenever the place heats up to 50 degrees of more, many people throw on their shorts as a way, I suppose, of saying, “Take that cruel winter, spring is coming!” I think cooking some asparagus to celebrate the coming of spring is a better idea. But Portlandia is Portlandia and I am learning how to appreciate her. She has problems like any other place with homelessness and wigged out people occupying underpasses and such. She is also very fun and filled with many fabulous restaurants, mostly ethnic in brick buildings and food trailers alike. She celebrates roses every year with a parade, take that Pasadena. And she has great bridges that span the Willamette and Columbia rivers. And the rivers have water in them, take that Salinas. The Rogue and the Klamath are up here too and yearning to be free. Some dams are coming down and I hear the salmon are happy about that. The farmers not so much. Seems there are always some oxen to be gored.