Of all things, this morning my memories led me 11 years back to a Christmas time spent in Kingsville, OH, with Wolfie and Kosh and PGH Patronus. Despite the actions I'd taken to get there, once there, I had a very good holiday. That said, I'm relieved how much time has passed and the condition in which I'm spending the solstice/xmas/yuletide/holidays this year. A very merry from Evan and me!

As part of my planned rest days/PTO after working the holidays, I've worked out at Mod Physique every day this week. This morning when the alarm went off, I realized I was dreaming I was in class! Funny. I also had a sauna/massage combo at Loyly, red velvet cupcakes have been purchased and eaten, and yesterday during a Portland group working day hosted by Airbnb, my colleague Bubut and I were completely unexpectedly sung to by our colleagues, and we each were presented with some kind of yummy looking pies with candles. All in all, pretty cool. :) There will be further celebrations tomorrow by going on a personal tour of the Hat Museum with grrlpup and sanguinity, and later on we'll celebrate another January birthday celebrant, snottygrrl. Very busy week and weekend, actually— much more frenetic than somehow I had initially imagined. evannichols has Dude Night tonight, and I in turn am going to attend my first ever free clothing swap. So many activities!

I also took my pair of cowboy boots to Shoes on the Run downtown in order to fix a hole in the sole I hadn't realized was there until last month when my mom and stepdad were visiting and I wore them to Multnomah Falls. I normally don't go downtown (certainly not in a car and when I will have to park), but Tuesday became more complicated since Evan was trying to schedule in an appointment to see his chiropractor, and I had the car. Thanks to our handy neocortexes, I was able to go work out, drop off the boots, take the car to his work, have a quick visit with Evan, be walked to the nearest bus stop, and rode the bus home.

This weekend will mark the second of my two full sat/sun weekends, truly luxurious. I'll work Monday as it's a holiday (and I'm keenly interested in being paid double, thanks all the same) but then have Tues-Thurs off once more. This week is the anti-frenetic, not-so-focused-on-being-constantly-productive rest time. There will be movies and knitting, reading, and hopefully a lot of writing. Also moving my altar so that it's not on a shelf but can be open to space. It seems claustrophobic to me right now, so with the help of a couple of paper boxes and the acquisition of Kristi-selected fabric to cover them, my sacred space can be moved from under its overhang. It's all part of a very organic process that feels true to my path right now. I find I'm at last able to get out of my own way; I know I'm not struggling against the current of where to expend my energies. I'm cultivating gratitude and it's second nature. These are welcome felicitations. :)

There are so many ways in which I feel more and more grounded these days— in recent days, it's because I came back from Harrisonburg with pretty much all of my belongings. The rug and bin that we shipped arrived yesterday, so it's all here now. In going through it, I came across two lovely and talisman-filled care packages from rainwish that hadn't initially made their way here. Now my altar is truly gorgeous, with fabric, more stones, a Lego Gimli (not from Rainwish, but he is my symbol of strength), a polished circle of stone I'd held on to from my college roommate (perhaps even given as a birthday gift while still in school), and a paper crane from a newer friend, ohthatjocelyn. There's also a colorful cornucopia Thevina/Kristi-centric collage created by emansil_12 on the shelf nearby. I'll take another picture soon. It fills me with such joy to glance over at it, much less spend quiet time there in meditation, or just sitting quietly with my morning coffee, breathing in openness and breathing out anxiety, holding my loved ones in light.

And in other news: The cabled hoodie I'd knitted that never fit properly on me turns out to fit grrlpup like a glove! I'm thrilled that it's with her. There's still enough yarn left (or so I hope, lol) that I'm going to make this vest for myself: The back is equally gorgeous.

Today is my first official day of training as a promoted specialist in Resolutions. This really wasn't the area I'd planned to go to in my time at Airbnb, but the need was there and I believe that once I learn more of the ins and outs of basic protocol, I'll find a very happy home as a 'Resolutionary.' They deal very much in the grey area of disputes and people who are generally unhappy for a variety of reasons. While I do very much enjoy having policies and standards to use as the girders of responding to our users, I think I'll find it quite empowering now to be able to have the tools to grant refunds, take losses, educate and warn (when necessary) with a more authoritative voice so improve our ever-expanding community of users. So… let the training begin!

I'm back at Airbnb effective immediately (though I don't have my laptop; I'll retrieve it tomorrow when I'm back at our Portland office) and very grateful. I have learned a tremendous amount about my own strength during this, as well as the amazing support and love that is granted so fully to me. Thank you all for your kind words during what was a pretty challenging several days!

I don't really want to put in bullet points for this post (though I enjoyed putting in flowers earlier), so I'll just write a few things to do with the wonderfulness of recent days. On Friday I had a follow-up/second-and-final interview at the downtown company where I'd love to work. It went very well, and I was asked to stay (if I could) to shadow someone for about fifteen minutes. Good sign. I'll hear from them by the end of this coming week, so I'll have closure one way or another and I'm so glad of that. I may also have an interview at another company for a temp-to-hire position through a placement company; we'll see. When evannichols and I arrived at his house Friday afternoon, I spent some time speaking with his sister about all of this because she's recently been offered and accepted a position at this company. When I did finally head inside, I found Evan looking a bit expectantly at me, and then I saw them: a beautiful bouquet of peach/coral roses, and a card. Not to do with my job hunt, but just because he's as smitten with me as I am with him. There might have been a bit of subtle swooning.

This weekend was restful and restorative, and also included some social time meeting snottygrrl to see one of the films that was part of the Studio Ghibli Film Festival held at the Portland Art Museum NW Film Center. The one we saw (My Neighbors the Yamadas) has a director other than Hayao Miyazaki; we're all Miyazaki fans and have seen many of his films on both the big and small screen. Evan and I were particularly interested in seeing at least one of these films that aren't available in a format we can rent, so that was accomplished.

I'm back over at my place now, unpacking and also preparing to repack as I'll be spending a fair amount of time at evannichols' this coming week and weekend. He has a birthday coming up on Friday, and it's one of those memorable ones that ends in either '5' or '0'. Follow his blog to know which. ;) There will be a special-ordered (by me, even!) gluten- and dairy-free fabulous cake, and dinner, and lounging, and goodness only knows what else. Maybe online Boggle. It could happen. ;) But for this evening, I'll settle in with a small serving of Fritos and queso, some Being Human, dismantling another beautiful (and free!) sweater, and a few other things before heading to bed and hitting the ground running tomorrow morning. A quick thanks to emansil_12 for the wonderful phone call today, and to llembas for the letter I received when I came home.

I'll try to keep my 'vomiting rainbows' elements to a minimum, but there's something so wonderful about being able to have a sleepover with my beloved on a weekday, get dropped off literally next to a bus for me to catch to get home the next morning, then see him again for lunch a few hours later. And now it's on the cusp of the weekend, which means that I'll get picked up after he has fun at Dudes' Night, and we can look forward to two days together. Yesterday was particularly delightful in that I spent a couple of hours at BHFT between my lunch date with evannichols and his leaving for the day, and in that time, two wonderful things happened: I had a completely out of the blue phone call from heartofoshun, and then a fellow knitter approached me (I was working on my new project) and we chatted for a while about knitting and I gave her my Ravelry info. After that, Evan and I went and took a walk with sanguinity since the weather was cooperating. Must admit that I forgot to tell her about my reaction to Cleopatra 2525. Next walk.

Today started out quite chilly and foggy, but then cleared to an absolutely gorgeous day. You all know that I do love my grey skies, but the occasional clear day is also welcome. I came home to discover that Robin, one of the matriarchs, was making oatmeal cookies with other goodies in them, and she offered one to me as I ate a grapefruit in the unconventional manner that I enjoy them. Oatmeal Scotchies go surprisingly well with grapefruit. ;)

This afternoon I've looked through my interlibrary loan book about Japanese sex clubs (a photography book, primarily) and am about to settle in to watch an episode or two of Wallander while knitting on my vest before thinking about dinner.

My heart is quite buoyant these days. :)

This will be a super-short post about my trip thus far (very, very heavy on the baby action, and conversations about babies, and childcare, and pregnancy, and cars, and babies, and me getting a lot of knitting done, and some writing, and more conversations about and with babies going on around me), but I had an absolutely marvelous time visiting with heartofoshun. We met at Sweet Melissa Patisserie and hugged and squeed and talked and ate and drank coffee and talked and ate and drank coffee and talked and talked and talked. She was just as warm and expressive and articulate and enthusiastic and approachable and open as I imagined she would be. We hung out for a good three hours and I've decided that I definitely need to plan another trip up this way before I return to the west coast. It was a true gift to get to spend that much quality time one on one with her. Meeting fandom friends can be so life-affirming, especially when, to be candid, I've not felt that I have a whole lot to say to my siblings/stepsiblings/their spouses because I'm the lone divorcee with no children who isn't into babies. Or young children. So I've been knitting and hanging out in the same room, but feeling rather superfluous. But spending time with Oshun was a tremendous highlight. Right now I'm over at my brother's, and he's cooking something that smells quite delicious, and I've discovered he speaks Hindi to his son (10 month old, baby #2 for the trip), as well as English. Very interesting.

Tomorrow's speldiferous event? I'll get to visit with brumeux77 for the… third time, I believe it is! How fortunate of a person am I?!