snail tracks on the way to school...

on days when the sun is peeking out, even a little bit, we get to see snail tracks. when it's gray out, they blend in with the sidewalk and are hard to see, but when the sun catches them, they glisten. we're not 100% sure that's what they are, as we've never caught a snail in the act of crossing, but we do see them on the other side of the sidewalk and we're putting 2 and 2 together. every day francis looks for them as part of his walk to school..."maybe today we'll see snail tracks", and when we see them, we marvel. when the tracks loop around in circles, he'll giggle: where are they going? what are they doing? we see snails on the garden walls, and especially in the bushes (? i didn't know snails could climb up into bushes, but, yup, they're up there.) and if they're on the path to danger, he'll pick them up and put them back in the grass...

a sunny monday night at shilshole

with sunshine and summer comes nights at the beach, our little beach, not a BEACH beach, but it will do. bonfires, hot dogs on the grill, roasting marshmallows on hangers for smores, and makeshift beach baseball...

proof

i took this picture last week, as proof for those who do not live in seattle, and really, as proof for myself, so that i know that i am not crazy when i say the gray skies are like a low ceiling. the blue tries hard, it really does, but most days, the gray is just too strong...
on this day, before picking up francis from school, i checked the weather, because i was walking. the weather report had said thunderstorms, to which i was excited (contrary to what you may think: i'm not opposed to weather that does something. thunderstorms are rare in seattle, and i miss them, and alas, the predicted thunder did not happen) but when i stepped outside to test it myself, the sky was blue, so i set off with just a jean jacket and no umbrella. all the way to school i saw blue skies. but when i picked up francis, and we turned around to head home, the sky that had been behind me was completely black. i said: "francis, let's see if we can make it home before the rains come!" and we set off briskly. he just shook his head in resignation and said "mama. i think it must be true. the rain really DOES follow you wherever you go." (inside joke of my family) we walked fast, the wind picked up, and i actually got excited that we might experience thunder and lighting...something to make the gray worth it...but they never came. the rains started chuckin' it down when we were about a block away and francis said "let's run!" once inside, it started pouring, and was just the sort of afternoon to catch up on some wonder woman netflix and planet earth episodes.
today marks sunshine for three days in a row...
i'm ready for summer...

been a long time coming...

we've reached ten years! (ten-ure?)

dear friends...
many of you were around to witness a bold and moody tomboy move from pennsylvania farmland into seattle's infamous House of Funk over ten years ago, back in the spring of '95. i had always wondered whatever possessed my parents to allow that in the first place, given that "boys", and many of them, lived there, but looking back, i wonder if my mother had secretly been hoping i would find myself a husband (as mothers are often wont to do...) well, as provincial timing would have it, i actually did meet the boy who would become my future husband IN the house of funk. he didn't live there, he crashed there. regularly. i remember ed saying i was going to get to meet his friend "greg from portland" and that he was "so funny" i was gonna love him. well, the first time i met him: he had a closely-buzzed head, horn-rimmed glasses, and sported a matching track suit and a purposeful girl-repellent thin mustache. and i remember thinking: what was so funny about this greg person? funny looking? sure, ok. (greg protests: he says, we were all watching a movie...what did i expect him to do?)
he crashed at the house for over a week, and i remember writing to melissa, on a paper bag, pages and pages of how much this boy was driving me nuts. we bickered endlessly. he pushed my buttons. he was brazen. but we hung out alot. when he left for the summer without saying
goodbye (i thought), i decided he was "on my list" and i vowed to not talk to him anymore. i saw him later that summer at tom fest; didn't talk to him. it was rather nose-in-air, anne-of-green-gables of me, i know. that september, i went on a 9-mile overnight hike with lisa snyder, her brother matt, a lisa-smitten brian glenney, and greg; and i still didn't talk to him. i know i know: pathetic, childish and extreme. but strangely,(or, looking back, not so strangely,) i was thinking about him all the time.
i moved into the Stone Way House, to bunk with danajill, and then greg moved to seattle, and moved there too. i said: what are you, following me? but our schedules collided more often than not...( i would come home from work at 1am, and he'd be still up, in the kitchen, just "happening" to have a bowl of cereal, and we would talk late into the night, into morning...) and soon i regarded him as friend. and then as good friend. and then i secretly couldn't wait to get home to talk with him. and then i finally admitted to myself that i really really liked him. and then i was in love with him. we were so inseperable that josh teased me incessantly that we were going to get married. i always scoffed: "no way". but i was in love with him so much, that in classic rachel-wisdom, i decided to move back home.
i went home that winter, catching a ride with josh, and drove thru the worst weather i have ever driven in: idaho black ice, colorado blizzards, kansas wind-storms, and ohio deep snow . we got home in a record 3 days/ 3 nights. josh drove for about...mmm... 10 minutes. and then he slept.
and slept. and slept. i think angels had my back, because i was just frantic...frantic to get home, frantic in my heart; my brain just hurt.
well, needless to say, greg was hurt and confused and depressed that his best friend left town so suddenly (did he just call me his best friend? yippee!) we started writing letters, long, almost daily letters for the next eight months we were apart. greg is, to this day, the only person who
has ever matched me page for page in the novellas-masquerading-as-letters i could write. i would write him 26 pages, he would send me 28. with bits of flowers, drawings, stamps...when he went to uganda in the spring, i quickly moved back to seattle and he was a little dismayed that he had "just missed" me. but he didn't know i had been waiting for him to leave...
greg continued to write, and i continued to be vague ("signed, your friend, rachel") i was so resolute in not giving my feelings away, that greg was convinced i had no feelings for him, he thought i had a heart of stone and that he didn't stand a chance with me. and so, he bitterly went elsewhere for love...
when he returned from uganda, i met him at the airport in portland. he came off the plane bearded and tan and muscular; i was so in love with him i thought i would faint, but managed to feign nonchalance. which was good, because that weekend, he told me he was with some one else and it was serious. however, he was testing my reaction, needed me to be disappointed, give some sign that i cared--because he was torn... but i didn't give him that. i immediately thought what an idiot i was for ever thinking greg could possibly like me, hugged him and told him how happy i was that he had found true love. and then i went to my room and bawled my eyes out.
what ensued was a month of nose-bleed stress: greg deciding he really did want to be with me, calling it off with the other girl, and then setting himself into wooing me. i think i gave him a
hard time. i didn't want to give in if it wasn't really gonna be IT. but he persisted, daily, for three weeks...then he wrote his last love letter, i call it his last because it was the final one that broke me, with a bunch of sobs,...and i finally confessed i loved him back.

and that is how our long bumpy road together started. all that drama, and that was just the beginning! ( don't even get me started on our honeymoon! that 3-month long road-trip that was supposed to be heaven? well, we joke that greg was ready to leave me by the time we reached
Denver; just who was this cry-baby pyscho-freak he had just been tricked into marrying? well, you can guess we were pretty relieved, albeit understandably dismayed, when we discovered i was pregnant--and that's a whole 'nother story--but, we have the Francis now, and we've decided to keep him.)

my father has recently offered something pretty close to an apology, over how cheap our wedding was. he said he is surprised i let him get away with it. that's ok, i forgive him; he was pretty new at it: i was his first child to get married, and now that he's on the fourth, he's finally realizing how expensive weddings really are. our barefoot/DIY/potluck wedding was just fine-for-the-times, i assured him, and looking back, there's really not much i would have changed (well, except for my frightful fountain hair. seriously. you should see the pictures...oh wait, greg says: his hair too. he would change his giant poofy hair. see? case in point: why spend all that money on weddings, when, in ten years, all you're going to think is: were you satisfied with your hair?...)

we've had a harder road than we thought it would be, and i'm so glad that we're still together. and that we still love each other. it's really crazy to ponder that it's been ten years, and if i ever really doubt it, i have a nine-year-old ready to remind me just by his very presence...loudly.
and with star wars sound effects...

xo

mozilla blues

so i've been trying to get this thing started for awhile now. and as you can see, there's not much here. it's been hard trying to write. for one thing, the gray pushes down on my eyelids and forces me to take a nap. for another thing, i've been reading alot of great books. and for a final thing, our computer has been acting up in a most confusing manner that has not only baffled me, but has baffled the husband. one browser eats things and the other freezes everthing. specifically, the main problem is that when i'm trying to upload pics from my phone, the computer "encounters an error" and shuts down. and when i'm trying to upload pics from the computer to this site, everything disappears. every window that i have pulled up, looking at, multiple pages, like a sneeze, they just: ach-oo! right off the screen...and then i have to reboot.
it is most tiring.
so, that, coupled with all my napping and reading has left me with little to write about.
but i will tell you that i recently sent my mom a web-link to my friend josh's fiance's blog, about her travels and trials in bolivia. my mom needed my dad to help her look at it, and she said, and i quote: " who is mozilla firefox? is that her name?"
i wish i could have been there to see the look on my dad's face as he pondered the idea of josh marrying a girl named mozilla firefox.
i have a name for mozilla firefox, but it's not a nice one, so i won't say it...at least not here...

the hills are alive...