Event of the weekend (besides my delicious birthday, thank you very much!)

So yesterday afternoon I went to a birth blessing. I was skeptical, at first, about how a birth blessing would be different from (or could be better than) a baby shower. I'm happy to report I had nothing to worry about - it was a wonderful way to celebrate the coming arrival of my friend's first, and there are several things about the afternoon I'd like to remember for the next shower I find myself organizing.

Aside from the healthy and scrumptious snacks (fresh veggies with goddess dressing, homemade soups, yummy cookies), fanciful cocktails & other bevvies (sparkling water & sorbet), and a handful of exceptional women eager to participate and contribute, here are the fun details that made yesterday's birth blessing unique and worth repeating:

01 Consu crafted a book of empty pages for us to fill with gentle reminders on what we love about HK, so that when she finds herself lost in being a mama, she can flip through our words and summon her strongest qualities

02 Henna! Working in concentric circles around her belly, each of us decorated a bit of her tummy. In the end, we had a masterpiece on our hands (err, stomach).

03 We each contributed something meaningful to build a birthing alter. I loved the variations: poems, parenting advice, seeds to represent the budding family, photographs. It turned out to be a beautiful little table, lit up by candles, that will be in the birthing room with Hilary during the delivery.

04 My favorite part of yesterday was the organization of a phone tree. When Hilary goes into labor, Nicole will light a candle and call one person. That person will light her candle and call the next person. By the end of the chain, we will have each received the call, lit our candle, and called the next person in line. Collectively, we will be sending our friend good energy as she does this thing.

Sigh. OK, snap out of it. Back to it. Enough woo woo!


Here's the gift I made & brought: towel with hood (essential - now I want one!) and coordinating wash cloth & stuffed bunny

A note on speling

Confession: I tend to lean towards the phonetic approach to spelling.

It was brought to my attention this evening by two very astute readers that I occasionally miss the mark when it comes to spelling. "Manifesto," for example, was recently typed as "Manefesto" (luckily that error has been corrected). The movie Dark Knight debuted here for a short time as Dark Night. Even simple expressions, elementary some might say, like "I here what your saying," or "count me in, to" rear their ugly heads. Once, as I was packing for my big move to Boston, I labeled a series of boxes "fragil." My brother won't let me live that one down. Even as I type this you'd be surprised how many words are flagged with that vigilant red underline.

Common known fact (and know that I hate to fall back on this crutch): generally speaking, architects can't spell to save their lives. Not sure why this is. And I doubt its going to change any time soon.

But please keep coming back. Forgive me my spelling errors. And, if you can't help yourself, definitely let me know when I've, ah, mistyped.

PS - Something obvious - Spell Check - comes to mind. I have no good excuses, OK?

Where!?!

Where in the name of Sam Hill have I been!? I'm afraid I have no good excuse. Well, I did go back to working a full five-day week. Maybe that's it. I'm just plain busier.

So then I up & took another "sick day." This time we went to Voodoo Donuts, the Zoo, Skyline Restaurant, and Powell's. The finest Portland has to offer - it doesn't get any better than that. Here's what we saw:














This is what I look like after a very good day.

Just give me the art manifesto - leave the rest

Today I tagged along to a job site about 90 minutes south of Portland, where our office currently has two municipal projects under construction, plus a third one down the road (library + justice center + post office all in one small town).

*skip ahead to link at bottom of page if you want to spare yourself some weirdness and get to the good stuff*

Here are a few random observations and occurrences from my twelve hour day:

- animal trophies - as in heads - on the floor in the conference room every where, staring at the ceiling (I'm sorry, Jess)

- talk about tear gas, stun guns, and gas bombs and their unique applications (not my talk, mind you - I just listened); by the way, have I told you about the time when we lived at Athena's Paradise (if you know us you know where that darling place was) and our hippy doctor landlord (a lady, no less) attempted to sell us a stun gun? No really.

- 45 minute discussion with a toothless painter on his professional techniques as an artist and experimenter (this in terms of how to evenly paint the tape and the gyp., how to successfully match color, and the merits of epoxy versus semi gloss

- lunch at a Mexican restaurant, where I ordered a chimichanga and the construction crew I was with all ordered variations of a single enchilada with beans & rice, plus water

- an in-depth look and the current and tragic Mexican drug war under way and how I should avoid the border towns at all cost ( this conversation did not occur at the restaurant mentioned above)

- and yes, I was passenger in a vehicle with a driver who attempted to drive off at the gas station while the nozzle was still pumping gas into the truck; the young man on duty fortunately caught the blunder before it became a very embarrassing and expensive mistake

Can you imagine? And really, it wasn't a bad day. Just long. And intense. I learned a lot more than I thought I would. And not just about construction! I also realized that women in the building industry are extremely rare. Today it was me & about 100 dudes on the construction site.

Tonight, over dinner, Ryan asked me to please stop sharing the events of my day with him. Collectively they were bringing him down.

*and for the good stuff*

But watch this, something that instantly brightened me right up and gave me lots of hope and inspiration. Enjoy.