McDaniel Musings: February 2013

I apologize for not blogging in such a long time. I don't have an excuse. Actually, that's a lie. I have a lot of excuses, probably hundreds, but excuses kind of annoy me because really there's no such thing as an excuse for not getting something done, so rather than just take the easy way out, I'll just apologize and move on with life.

So, this past weekend Matt and I flew to Portland, Oregon to go to the All-Northwest Choir concert that one of his students made it into. If you aren't familiar with what this is, it's a pretty big deal for high school kids. It's made up of students from 6 different states in the Northwest, and it's very difficult to get into. I got to go for Orchestra my senior year in high school, and it was an amazing experience. If you are into music and live in one of the six participating states, you should definitely try out for it!

Anyway, since the concert wasn't until Sunday morning, we flew over Saturday morning so we would have a day to run around Portland and have some fun. A word here about flying. I don't like flying. I have never liked flying, and I don't think I ever will. Nothing bad has ever happened while I was flying, and I guess you could call it an unnatural fear, but I really don't like being miles off the ground in the hands of pilots I don't know with a bunch of strangers surrounding me.   It just terrifies me. I've only flown a handful of times: once when I was in second or third grade to go to Oklahoma when my Grandpa was really sick and we all thought he was going to die (he made it about 20 years past that, by the way). What I remember about this flying experience is that I didn't get to sit next to my mom on the plane, and it was the first time I had ever flown. We hit turbulence, and I started freaking out and practically hyperventilating. Luckily my mom was right behind me on the plane and she kept a hand on my shoulder and assured me we were fine and safe and not going to die. I was always afraid of dying as a kid. My next plane ride happened when I was in about 5th grade, my brother Karlin and I flew to Texas to visit my Dad. I was still terrified of flying, and I clung to my brother the entire time. I remember getting on the airplane and bursting into tears because I didn't want to leave my mom and I didn't want to fly. The nice lady sitting next to me on the airplane offered me the cherry that was atop her dessert (you know, they used to actually serve food on most flights). It was the only thing she could think of to try to cheer me up.

My next flying experience didn't happen for another many years - my Europe trip 2008. What a way to break back on flying. We flew out of Boise to Denver, to Washington DC (the worst landing ever...high winds forced the airport to close down all but one runway, so we flew figure-eights in the sky several times until our turn to land and nobody knew what was going on. The landing was horrible. Matt just about tossed his cookies, and I was trying to keep from having a panic attack. Don't believe me? Ask Matt. Or Joyce or Milon. They will ALL tell you it was a bad landing). It's a good thing we had to sprint to make our connection to Paris because if I would have had any time to stop and think about it, I probably would NOT have boarded that next flight to Paris.   The rest of the flights were fine - I only had one small freak-out over the middle of the ocean when I realized we were no where near land and if the plane went down, we would probably never be found and be eaten by sharks or something equally scary. But hey, the trip was great! I don't remember a lot about the return flights, because I was so exhausted from running all over France and Spain that I'm pretty sure I slept most of the way home.

My next flight was last year when Matt and I flew to northern Idaho for All-State (a smaller version of All-Northwest). He had five or six students make it into that choir, so we flew up to watch the concert. Another fun trip.

Anyway, the point is I HAVE flown, and I DO fly, but I still don't like it. But, it's a means to get from place to place, and if I ever die in a plane crash, I'm just going to assume it's my time to go.

Back to Portland - AWESOME trip!! The flight over only took about 49 minutes. As soon as we hit the tarmac we phoned our hotel to send the courier service to pick us up. We got in about 10:30 in the morning, so we couldn't check into our hotel yet. We dropped our bags in the back office and headed out on the town. I had never been in a taxi before, so Matt splurged (22 dollars to go about six miles) and got us a cab ride to Powell's City of Books.   I had only ever heard how wonderful this place is, and it DID NOT disappoint. It made me so happy! I could have spent a week there. And a lot of money. Matt and I decided to split up for a while (our taste in literature does not particularly match, much like our taste in most music), and I was off to the blue room where I spent most of my time perusing various titles and authors and looking for books that had been on my wish list. After about 45 minutes or so, I was off with my arm-load of books to find Matt, and when I found him, he carried not one single book! He told me he couldn't afford to get any books because I had used up the book budget, but that is nonsense because he didn't know I had several books picked up when he chose to not pick any books up himself!

We wandered around Powell's a little bit more, and, as much as I wanted to spend the rest of my day there in literary happiness, I knew if I stayed much longer I would have to purchase a new suitcase to take all of my books home. So we decided to take a gander in the Rare Book Room (another site to behold), and take off. While we were in Powell's, the heavens decided to open up and rain, so we also purchased a small black umbrella (which didn't do us much good since by the end of our wandering the city we were both drenched and cold). Armed with my bag of books and our black umbrella, we set out to find lunch. We ended up at a delicious little noodle shop where I had the best pesto dish and fresh salad I had ever had.

Now, I've always been told you can't visit Portland without a stop at VooDoo doughnuts. I fully intended on packing as many calories into my trip to Portland as possible, so with that in mind, we set off armed with our Powell's purchases and full tummies in search of VooDoo doughnuts on third avenue. As we trudged our way through the streets of Portland, wet and chilly yet excited and happy, we found a large group of people crowded around a building, all standing under umbrellas and chatting excitedly among each other. Many were walking away with large pink boxes, and I figured we found the right place. Lo and behold, above the crowd was the sign that told us we found our spot. The problem was, the closer we got, the larger the crowd seemed to grow. By the time we got there we realized there were about 100 people standing out in the rain waiting for their chance to dig in to a doughnut. We decided we really weren't THAT into it (though I was a little disappointed), and better luck next time. While I would have loved to try a doughnut, I can't imagine they taste a whole lot different from our little Krispy Kreme Doughnuts here in Idaho. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm happy in my ignorance.

So, instead of doughnuts I had Matt take me back to a little cupcake shop we had passed on our search for VooDoo, and it was delicious. I ordered a Chocolate Chip Cupcake that was filled with chocolate chip cookie dough, and it was to die for. Those were some well-consumed calories.

Fat and happy we talked about what we wanted to do next. By then it was late afternoon and we were tired and wet, so we decided to navigate our way back (correction: Matt navigated us back) to the train stop where we purchased our day pass and caught the train back to our motel. After resting up, freshening up, and a quick face-time call to our kiddos back in Idaho, we decided to find a nice place to have dinner. We don't really celebrate Valentine's Day - it's more for our kids than for us (I have a pet peeve about Valentine's Day and a $65 bouquet of roses when you can buy them any other time for the low low price of $16.99).   We decided to wait and have a nice dinner in Portland. There were a few problems with this idea: first, our motel was not near the train stop, so we couldn't get back downtown easily and didn't want to pay a taxi again. Second, the only two restaurants that were near our motel were Hooters and a place called BJ's right across the street (which I find hilariously ironic). Neither was quite what I had in mind for a nice dinner out, though I did tell Matt to just take me to Hooters because I was hungry and didn't want to walk very far for dinner. There is a long, on-going argument about Hooters between Matt and I (that's a story for another day), but really the anger and irritation about it has died down on my part, and now I just tease him about it. I was perfectly fine with going to Hooters for dinner, but he said he would never, ever hear the end of it if he took me on a Valentine's Day date to Hooters, so he outright refused to take me. :) I'm not complaining.

We decided to ask the front desk of the motel what they would recommend. They asked if a steakhouse was okay, and they offered to drive us to a place call Stanfords, which ended up being delicious. Matt got a chicken dish and I had prawn fajitas, and they were delicious! Much better than anything I could have had a Hooters, I am sure.   After dinner, the motel came and picked us up (it was less than a mile away), and we walked over to a store right across from our Motel and picked up some doughnuts for dessert. Exhausted from our day of wandering, we devoured the doughnuts, took a shower (each of us coming out smelling like orange dreamsicles because all of the soaps and shampoos were lightly orange scented), and passed out for the night. I didn't want to crack open one of my new books from Powells because I was too tired!

The next morning we were up at 6:30, packed, and caught the train back to downtown Portland and found our way to the Civic Center where the All Northwest Concert was behind held. Talk about chaos. There were hundreds of high school kids (jazz, orchestra, band, and choir were all practicing and holding their concerts there), hundreds of parents and family milling around waiting for the concert, and a bunch of civic center worker all running around like chickens with their heads cut off, looking crazy busy but not seeming to ever accomplish anything. After waiting about an hour, we were finally seated and enjoying the concert, our whole reason for the trip. After an awesome concert, we caught the train back to the airport, had a Panda Express lunch (where we also watched what we think was an airport affair just across the way. It was very Fifty Shades of Grey in an airport, with clothes on), and relaxed and read books until time to board the plane headed home.

Coming home is always very bitter sweet for me. I loved the weekend, had a fabulous time with Matt. It's easy to forget how much fun it can be just the two of us with the chaos of life and kids and Matt's job, dance, preschool, doctor's appointments, etc - you know, the minutiae of life. But really it's the minutiae that makes life with living, makes another person worth loving. I had a great time, but missed my kids terribly and I just wanted to get home and give them big hugs and let them know how much I missed them.

I really am blessed. I have an amazing, loving husband who would do anything for me and the kids. I have two beautiful children who can be loud and crazy and be little turkeys but they are sweet and loving and I am head over heels for both of them. Sometimes I think I love my family too much, if that's even possible, but I don't think that's such a bad thing. I live in a beautiful home, and I really live a wonderful, blessed life. Short vacations are nice, but there really is no place like home. This weekend I had a realization of what makes me the happiest in this life: family, books and home. I knew it all along, but sometimes you have to experience being away from something to really appreciate it even more.

Here are a few pictures of my family I have taken over the last few weeks, and a couple of pictures from our trip at the very end. Enjoy!