Moving Day again!

Judd was a hero about researching, checking out and discovering livable abodes.  In the evening or weekends, I would get to drive to 4 to 8 places, some with realtors, some without, and weigh in on how much I liked the area/house.We are pretty consistently on the same page.  We don’t like the sameness of the endless track homes, new though they may be. The epitome of our disgust came on the day we looked at a house that shared a fence behind Walmart. The better houses have a fenced back yard where the fence is so high, you don’t have to actually see the neighbors three feet away. We were really happy to discover a not-the-same place.  It is on the eastern edge of town (still 12 minutes anywhere) and a wee bit more “rural”  (i.e. not every yard is manicured with matching landscaping and sidewalks.) Some house have a double yard, no side-walks but a big shoulder on either side of the road. Our chosen place is half a duplex, but no one lives in the front-plex.  The landlord’s wife is an artist and she uses the front as a studio  (I have yet to meet her.) The back spot has a burbling creek running by and sits against a vineyard-- a high end vineyard where one only visits by invitation.  We're happy to not go. We love hearing the water and peepers when we sit outside in the evening.  We love the weird “great room” which is really the size of three rooms .  We have it sectioned off with plants and chairs to be where we spend the most time:  the easy chairs in front of the TV and window with a view, the big table where we both spread out our desk-activities; and the entryway where we pretend we’ll need a mud room.

After work (before moving-Saturday) we had our last “in temporary quarters” meal.  Walking around downtown, we stumbled across a road blocked off for a different activity. We crashed a street fair and listened to Recess Monkey—a kids’ band (get it? Not RHESUS monkey .) Gaggles of kids of all sizes and parents of all persuasions were in the street dancing to the music, getting faces painted, crying, laughing, squirreling.  We had happy hour at a wine tasting room which billed themselves as one of the top 100 in the world.  We begged to differ with them, just not to their faces. We had dinner at Saints and Sinners, where the margaritas are either sweet or spicy. We’ve taken to ordering one plate and sharing when we want to avoid leftovers, or intentionally buying two dishes when we want seconds for lunch the next day. As we were about to unpack our household goods and begin cooking again, we opted for no leftovers. Government movers came for 3 hours last Saturday and unloaded all our boxes from So. Oregon and our meager furniture belongings.  We spent the rest of the weekend washing everything we packed and trying to find garbage space for the mountains of packing paper/boxes. 

Our favorite kind of wine tastings is one at the vineyard, where you can sit outside with a view of grapes growing and hills lolling. We always think we'll play the lawn game but don't have to. Friendly, non-prissy staff helps too.  We heard only one place also had a kitchen so Sunday after unpacking we drove the 20 min to Waterbrook Vineyard.  WW has been 100 degrees every day this week and the once rolling green hills have turned to amber grain and now look rather like a yellow desert as far as humanly possible to see. I had just remarked to Judd that I don't know how Washington is known as the "Everygreen State."  This time of year it seems more like the Ever-yellow State. As the name Waterbrook leads you to believe, the vineyard sits by water, although we had a strong suspicion that it was man-made.  Bad timing for us—the kitchen was not serving snacks/early dinner, as it was their monthly wine club event and they were feeding masses later.  They did let us do a tasting and we sat outside for a while and enjoyed the view.  When we returned to the counter to pick up the leftover chardonnay where they were keeping our bottle cold, they couldn’t find the bottled labeled “Judd.”  They gave us a brand new unopened bottle which we found very civilized. The new chilled bottle came in handy when we returned home for our first cooked Judd-meal at the new place. After dinner we lingered by the creek until dark.  I was alarmed to hear a non-water-burbling noise near my chair and stressed myself out mightily when a honking big opossum showed up, followed by a medium opossum.  Judd assured me they were just going for a drink or to eat the apples dropped from the neighbor's tree or the pears dropped from our own tree.   I assured Judd, I was just going inside.