What it's like in Portland

We've been in a new city for a month and I havent written that much about it yet. Probably because we've mostly been working and settling into our new house and neighborhood, and shopping at Target instead of going to Powells or eating Voodoo Donuts or smelling roses or any of the other Portlandish stuff we thought we'd be doing.

Here's a 15 minute power blog on what it's like to be the Juniper Family in Portland right now.

• Our house is a cute little ranch house, but we all live in one room of it.
• Our contractor did that cliche thing of coming by, knocking down some walls, taking a check for $6000 and never coming back.
• Actually, we are waiting for stuff - like doors and bathtubs - to come in so he can work on them, but when you are doing a renovation, isnt it like a law that you have to complain about the contractor?
• Also, in the big mortgage debacle of summer 2007 when we didnt even know if we were going to get the house or not, he took another job, so he's been kind of squeezing us in.
• Which I can't blame him for.
• For those keeping score at home: number of visits to DMV for me to get a license and register my car = 4. The same number of visits I've made to banks trying to get a new account.
• The material world is so trying for us mystics.
• I'm never actually considered a mystic unless beaurocrats are involved.
• However, I did pass my drivers test on the first try.
• This is good, because I have Issues about drivers tests and also, I failed the online one I took for practice before I went in so success was not guaranteed.
• But I only got one wrong (out of 30) in the written test. Did you know that you can drive a FIRE TRUCK with a class c license? There, now you wont get it wrong.
• Speaking of fire trucks, we have two cool parks in walking distance. One is a little human-made lake. One is the yard of a fire station. E likes the fire station one best. Who can blame him?
• We have a beautiful yard, but we only have time to sit in it on Sunday afternoon.
• Then we say, "Gack! Everything is drying up!" and run around watering things.
• Which is actually fun as gardening work goes.
• We are curious to see what will come up in the spring, so we are waiting til next year to plant bulbs.
• This makes the 5 year old our house incredulous.
• He believes everything should be done immediately.
• Which is why, for those keeping score at home, I paid $47 for his halloween costume so he can be a Jedi knight with a light saver, er saber.
• He could pretty much have anything he wants right now because I'm feeling kind of guilty about the move and the amount of daycare I've dumped him in.
• Except for candy. I drew the line when the first words out of his mouth a couple mornings in a row were: "I havent had any candy yet."
• We got all this candy when we rode the cool real live public transportation to the Beaverton 50th anniversary parade.
• Which was the kind of parade where a guy from Kiss was the grand marshall, since he graduated from a local high school and it ended in kind of a vacant lot where somebody from Radio Disney was shouting at people from a tiny, rickety stage.
• Also, people of many religions including Bahai and Fulan Gong were passing out flyers.
• If I were not UCC, I think I'd be Bahai. I would not be Fulan Gong. Unless they stopped passing out flyers showing photos of their members who have been tortured to death. I mean, cripes. A kid could have seen that.
• And then he would have a bad dream.
• And then none of us would sleep, since we're all living in, did I mention? one room.