Finally: Some Photos from The Great Road Trip to Portland

My New Little Camera arrived yesterday, but I haven’t had time to sit down and read the manual (and y’all KNOW I always read the manual before I use anything. Of course I do) and so haven’t actually used it yet.
I’m trying to get things cleared away. I still have hope that, when we return from New Orleans, we’ll have time before school starts for The EGE to help me strip this room bare, strip the ceiling and paint it and paint the walls and rip up the carpet and stain the cement floor. That’s the dream. Whether it’s going to happen or not is really iffy. But I still feel a huge need to weed out and sort yet some more—I’m feeling overwhelmed lately:  we’ve been home a little over two weeks, and it seems that all I’ve done is deal with contractors and phone people and internet people and insurance people. This morning I’m out here working (because there is actually plenty of that going on, as well), and I keep hearing a noise, like my neighbors are drilling metal. I finally get up and go out to check, and it’s the Gutter Guy, installing the rain gutters for the new roof. Turns out I should have been out there MUCH earlier, as he’s installed one with the downspout draining into our neighbors’ yard. Technically, it’s probably our yard, but they think it’s their yard, and that’s fine with us. So I have to call the company so he can send the guy back to fix it later, after an argument with my husband, who keeps saying, after each Little Incident, that he can fix it. And I lose my mind and yell that he shouldn’t HAVE to fix it because I’m writing CHECKS to have this shit done, and it should be done the right way in the first place, and, if it’s not, then they must come back and rectify it. I don’t care what my husband CAN fix, it’s what he SHOULD fix, and that would be:  nothing. There shouldn’t be any damn thing left for him to have to fix. If he’s out there in the yard dicking around, it should be because he WANTS to be out there in the yard dicking around, not because he’s having to go along behind contractors and sub-contractors and fix the little things they’ve left undone.
But that’s exactly what he’s been doing, and, as a consequence, I’ve been doing a LOT of yelling.
Here’s my life these last couple of weeks:  I’m sitting out here on the phone to the insurance claims office in Jacksonville, Florida, talking to a nice young woman who is telling me that I should have sent in the estimate before I had the metal roof done. I’m explaining to her that I called and talked to Sam before I had it done, and this was all he needed, since the adjustor was here on the day we agreed on the price for the metal roof.
The EGE comes in the room to tell me the Gutter Guy is back and needs me to come out and tell him what to do. I can’t get off the phone; we’re right in the middle of figuring out what I need to fax to them to get them to release the depreciation. I’m trying to get off the phone with her, and she’s being thorough, since I seem just the teensiest bit wired about her having said I didn’t Do It The Right Way, when I did it just exactly like they told me when I called to ask them what I needed to do before signing the contract for the metal roof.
It’s been like that a LOT around here. I start work on an article I’ve been looking forward to for months, and I find I can’t get anything done because I can’t stay over there in Writing Brain; I’m constantly having to come back over to Organizational Brain and deal with people, phone calls, paperwork.
Oh. Wait. I said this was about photographs, didn’t I? Geez. I’m sorry. Here you go:


This is of some mountains in Oregon. One of you Oregonians please tell us which ones they are. Pretty, though, huh? I like snow OK when it’s that far away.
Note:  my husband likes landscapes and flowers and stuff. I like pictures that have either animals or people in them. Or art. Or things I want to make into art. Not so much with mountains and stuff, even though he does a great job with them. So I don’t actually pay attention to the landscape when he’s taking the pictures. If it turns out these are actually come he took in some other state, please let me know.

I got him to take this of the side of a winery because it reminds me of the drawings of Theo Ellsworth.
And then in San Francisco:

Me studying a map. I have no idea where I was, and that’s probably how I was feeling at the time, as well.

Me rushing up the stairs—he says he’s always getting the back of me as I rush ahead somewhere. There’s a lesson in there for me, but damn if I understand it.

A car I love.


Flax, the store where I want to go when I die.

Cool building.
More of me hurrying away:



This is the San Francisco I remember from when I was a kid.
Imagine our delight when, after a day of walking all over and several days before that of finishing up the bounty from our last visit to Trader Joe’s in Portland, we crest a hill in downtown San Francisco and see this:

Yay! We love Whole Foods. And we promptly went in and put together a fabulous salad to take back on the BART to our room.
But first!  To The Top of the Mark for a drink.

 
This is where I called Wendy, who was at her cabin in New York, and we talked about how the world has changed since we knew San Francisco as kids.

Then, on our way back to the train, we saw these two women. The EGE was trying to be cool and not be obvious about taking their photo. What we didn’t know is that they are, of course, the amazingly-famous Twins of San Francisco and would have been delighted to pose. Too bad for The EGE, who would have loved meeting them. And they, him, I’m willing to bet.
And there you go:  a short day trip through the Lovely San Francisco. Minus the Barfing Woman, who will haunt me forever, and the Men Who Talk to Their Shoes. You will love me for editing it for you.