pause

I'm in New York on business; haven't touched the novel in days. I knew this project would happen, and I knew it would mean a lengthy pause in my writing, but it came faster and harder than I expected. So now Dan is totally kicking my ass at Concentration Vacation. He's got a sweet setup in one of the bedrooms, the one that Grandma furnished especially for my brother and I when we were kids. Anytime we get home, whether it's from grocery shopping or a Tim Brickley and the Bleeding Hearts show, Dan immediately disappears in there for hours. He is IN the ZONE. I'm stoked for him, if a bit jealous.


But I will say, it feels nice to be challenged by Actual Work, or maybe just by something outside of my own brain. And to be bringin' home some juicy bacon. And New York! I had a few hours this afternoon to be free in the city, and it made me really jones to live here again in a non-student state of mind. This city is so much better when you're not penniless and stressed and living on 130th.

I know we're falling behind update-wise, but Pat just got me a new camera as a belated barfday present, so stay tuned. Indianapolis has been really really fun and relaxing and we have soooo much space and peace and I'll tell you all about it soon, or maybe Dan will get bored out there without me and decide to contribute to the blog hmmm? Unrelated: my hotel has janky wifi so I have to sit in the lobby to write this, and sitting next to me is a very tired-looking businessman in nice slacks and loafers, half-napping, listening to a blaring iPod, audible even over the lobby's smoove jazz, and I just caught the chorus coming from his earbuds: Oh Mandy / You came and you gave without taking. !!?? Not lying! Manilow! Divorce, maybe? *only-in-new-york headshake*

when we were going away

the drive

We're here!

Our car is covered in farm dirt and dead bees, which Dan views as sweet vengeance for the bee that flew through the car window the first day in Hope and stung him in the neck.


Two hours after our departure from Hope, we stopped in Bellingham to visit with Steven and Brenda, more old family friends (Dan observed that my parents have the coolest friends ever, which is really true), and then zoomed through Eastern Washington. We rested in an amazing little town called Ritzville, population 1736. My camera stopped working so these are all iPhone pics:

Next stop was Missoula, MT. It's a college town with a good creative writing MFA program, so I've always been curious about it. Too bad I already got my MFA; I could totally live there. We stayed in a cute B&B courtesy of a gift card from my brother, and the next morning we cruised around and enjoyed the benefits of the liberal oasis (vegeterian food, unsweetened iced tea, record stores). I forgot to take pictures for a couple days starting now, ewps.

The Montana leg of the drive was my favorite. We were well-rested from the B&B, and Dan played perfect music from his bottomless iPod. Through the big-sky farmland and silo towns, it was Lee Hazelwood (Cowboy in Sweden, Best Of, Nancy and Lee). Through the rocky terrain of mining towns and war memorials, Scott Walker (Scott 4, Scott 3, Nite Flights). Through the sudden expanse of yellow nothingness with blue NO SERVICES signs at every exit, a cowboy set of George Jones and Glen Campbell. And then through the "crazy mountains" of gnarled broken trees, we satisfied an inexplicable Neil Finn craving with Crowded House and Split Enz. It was so fun to watch the landscape of our country changing so quickly and organically, giving way to different climates and cultures and products in the time it takes to finish a single greatest hits.

Then there were patches of green trees, one out of every ten a burnt red color, and Joni Mitchell and Jim Guthrie, and then we dipped down into Wyoming for a bit. And then there was South Dakota. South Dakota went on and on. And on.


I don't even remember where we spent that night. At every hotel, we had to unpack all of Dan's instruments and everything in the backseat, which we did with a bleary-eyed sympathy for touring musicians everywhere.

We were giggly tourists at the Wall Drug store:


The Badlands were immense and scary and made you feel like some 19th Century Souix was about to casually pop out from behind a rock any minute.


South Dakotan vegetarian cuisine:



Iowa was adorable, a sharp change from the prairies. It looks a lot like Indiana: lush and green with big yards and happy farmers. We had lunch in Iowa City, another famous writing/MFA town that I've always wanted to see. By then we were so close, we just wanted to beeline for Indianapolis.

Grandma greeted us with freshly baked cookies and invitations from both uncles: watch Mad Men at Pat's bachelor pad? meet Tim for a drink? We did both, touring Tim's studio and drinking a beer across the street, and then driving to Pat's to watch Mad Men on his 133-inch TV. More updates and photos from Indianapolis coming soon; we're just settling in, unpacking, stocking the pantry with food, and generally getting our land legs back.

the end of hope

If our first week in Hope felt like a month, our last week has felt like about ten seconds. I've gotten overwhelmingly busy with Actual Work, and Dan has been juggling a bit of FunMo along with car-repair errands. (Nothing major, don't worry). But it does look like we're both going to meet the Hope Deadline (one chapter, one song), if only by the skin of our teeth.

Yauni and Dave came to visit on Sunday so we finally hit the tourist sites. We planned on meeting at Lake of the Woods, but we ran into them at Fields, natch, when we stopped to buy beach towels. We spent some time at the lake and then went to Sucker's Creek and the Othello Tunnels. Yauni showed Dave her childhood homes (although her mom's old hippie cabin in Othello is now an eco-retreat, haha) and the boys got wowed by the Tunnels. (Dan's planning a Rambo post, stay tuned.) It was such a beautiful day. Finished with pie at the Home Restaurant and a short tour of Eva's house before we had to kick them out so we could watch the Mad Men premiere.

View of the bridge from Sucker's Creek.

Even the Tunnels parking lot is epic.

It's always nostalgic coming back to Hope, but this time it's been especially intense. Partly because my parents aren't here anymore, and partly because I haven't had a proper visit in so many years. And mostly, perhaps, because I'm really shoving my face in the nostalgia, seeking it out and indulging it, as research for the novel's coming-home themes. It's been fun, but I'm looking forward to leaving and returning to 30. No matter how great my Hope memories are (and they really are great), nostalgia is still an intrinsically melancholy thing.

Yesterday on one of my many sloooow drives past my house, which my parents are renting to another family, I saw a young girl in a bathing suit darting out the front door, skipping the steps on the front porch to jump onto the lawn. I could feel the concrete porch under her summer-hardened feet, the cool arrival of the mossy grass. And I actually heard myself saying, in a defensive whine, "Hey!" That's my life, random little girl. Jeez.

look what we found at the tunnels!

Hahaha! (Sorry Kenny. We love you.)

brigade days

Every September, Hope celebrates its birthday with a weekend-long celebration called Brigade Days, including a parade, a carnival, fireworks, logger sports, a demolition derby, and the crown jewel of the weekend, the Briggie Ball. Entrance to all festivities is granted with purchase of a "Briggie Button," flat wooden pins that are currently on sale all over town. I haven't been around for Brigade Days since I was seventeen, and the Briggie Ball is 18+ so I've never attended that at all. And I am super bummed we're leaving Hope before September because LOOK AT THIS YEAR'S LINEUP!!!?!!:

vancouver, thank god

Just enjoyed a brief but much-needed respite in Vancouver. The day before we left, Dan and I were so excited about going to a real city that we could hardly sleep. It'd been five full days in Hope at that point, and it felt like nothing less than a month. Five days is a long time to listen to the drone of your own mind.

First stop in Vancouver was the Bobcats. The Bobcats have been playing at the same pub on Denman St. every Sunday for years, and it's been the epicenter of Brickley Family Funtimes for much of my adult life -- I even made Kelli and Sam come when we visited Vancouver a couple years ago. This video is pretty terrible but I felt self-conscious standing on the dancefloor with my FlipCam, especially since everything about the Bobcats is supposed to transport you to a decidedly pre-FlipCam era.



The crowd was all 60+, but they looked 80+ (hard livin'), and they danced like they were 50. In other words, we had the BEST TIME. Seriously. The waitress was speedy with the Granville Island Lager and of course we knew all the songs, earning us some approving and slightly salacious nods from the crowd.

Yauni and Dave picked us up and took us to the best Indian meal I've ever had in my life, at Vij's in South Granville. Yauni is an old family friend, the kind of friend where your mom has pictures of her in your bathtub when she was two. Dave, Yauni's boyfriend, promotes shows in Vancouver, which is actually his family business -- his father was the Bill Graham of Vancouver, and he has actual stories about Grandmaster Flash crashing in his childhood bedroom. Later we went back to their apartment and Bonnie (Yauni's mom / family BFF dating back to my parents' hippie days) came over with a frostbitten bottle of vodka in her purse. Pretty sure Yauni is contributing to the heated conversation about my mom's amazing wheat-germ-covered-frozen bananas in this picture...


The next morning Dan and I took the Aquabus to Granville Island, where we spent most of our time at the Kids Market wishing we were seven. SNOOPY SNO-CONE MAKER!


Then Yaunie and Dave took us on a driving tour of Vancouver (awesome except for the pouring rain), shopping on Robson, and then to Commercial Drive for dinner at an ancient Italian restaurant called Nick's that is recently enjoying a hipster renaissance, probably largely to do with the bibs.


Then we went to Casa Gelata (218 choices of ice cream flavors but they were out of my favorite, Tiger Tail, so I tried to manufacture my own with one scoop of black licorice and one of orange sherbert, which I don't actually recommend, nosiree) and drove the long dark highway back to the boondocks. Awoke this morning to our first substantial requests from Actual Work (FunMo/Outlaw), blech...

is this work?

A vast amount of unstructured time is a scary thing. Worried we might let it all slip by, we initially decided to keep a strict schedule for our work. But then we realized that one of the most exciting things about this trip, for both of us, is the ability to work whenever we're feeling inspired: to actually get up when you get an idea in the middle of the night and spend time pursuing it, rather than lying in bed trying to fall back asleep because you have to wake up at seven. That's a frustrating feeling, as anyone with a job and a creative persuasion and a dash of insomnia knows well. So we settled on a compromise: we can work whenever we want, as long as we log at least 5 hours, but preferably 8+, per day.

So far I think it's going well, although we're closer to the 5 mark most days than the 8. And really, it's kind of funny that we're thinking of this as work. It's not ringtones; it's not market research. What will happen soon, I'm sure, is that it will start being fun, and then we won't have to count our hours at all.

Meanwhile, the other hours in the day are pretty ruling. Our John Hughes marathon last night sent me on an ill-advised path of writing a Ducky/Anthony Michael Hall type character into my novel (abandoned that quickly, don't worry -- I'm so suggestive these days!). Dan's learned his way around Hope well enough to develop his own preferences in stores (he prefers COOPERS, ahem) and a fair obsession with Rambo sights. Still have lots of stuff to show him, but we're saving the touristy stuff for our rumored visitors... Heather? Anyone? Bueller?

the hope house

For the next three weeks in Hope, we are housesitting an epic treehouse, perched on the side of a mountain, with several small rooms all on different levels (going anywhere, even to the bathroom, requires a staircase). It's one of my favorite houses ever and I'm so grateful we get to stay here. The owner, Eva, is a Swedish documentarian and an old family friend.

Living room:


My workstation:


Dan's workstation:


Can't go anywhere without seeing something that makes you smile, like this random blue door in the wall:


Love this little guy in the kitchen!


The bathtub is heaven:


Can't really see but it says "Major M. McManus" above the door. (Not, however, "MacManus.")


Upstairs deck, pizza and Peeb, awkward let's-eat smile:


Peppers purchased direct from the farm. (You just drive up, take a bag from a hanging hook, and drop a toonie in a box. It took us forever to find the farm, which I only remembered vaguely from childhood, but asking the old ladies who work at the museum for directions was half the fun.)


K. Time to get to work for real now.

portland

Portland surprised us with its awesomeness. Heather devoted her entire Sunday to showing us around, which included: brunch at the Cricket Cafe, QT with the cutest (fattest) cats ever, a thorough Powell's tour, beer and pizza at one of the city's many $3 theaters, dinner at a Japanese restaurant, and a free show of exactly the kind of local indie-rock we wanted to hear. We caught the tail end of a heat wave, meaning that it felt insanely hot to us, but everyone else seemed to be greeting the slightest breeze with ecstatic relief.

We treated ourselves to a couple nights at a hipster hotel called The Ace. The paint-dripping text on the walls was kinda, um, No Doubt, but everything else about the place was great.


Especially the Leonard Cohen lyrics on the lobby wall.


Portland is filled with people on permanent concentration-vacations: they work a few days at a coffee shop, which earns them enough to pay their minuscule living expenses, and they spend the rest of their time making art. Heather pointed out that this aspect of the city has a few drawbacks, mainly the overwhelming amount of not-great art. But still, it made us a bit SF-resentful. Heather's gorgeous and spacious one-bedroom apartment is eight hundred flippin' dollars a month. Plus they get actual summers!

this will be our year

We started our drive with a breakfast at the Millbrae Pancake House. Lots of family from both sides (even in the big group shot, you can tell how freakin' cute my nieces are, right?).


Wish we had some pics from our official going-away party the weekend before, which lasted until 5am, but it was too much fun for picture-taking. We should've given cameras to the people who are sick of hearing MJ at danceparties (sorry guys).

The drive was quick and dirty, with lots of "This Will be Our Year" and Genius playlists. Somewhere around the time the scenery shifted from yellow grass to green trees, Dan learned how to skip.