The Blog I'm Not Writing

 

Because, that would be rude.

To gush about the mahhhhhhvelous trip MH and I took last week, to the San Juan Islands. The trip I alluded to in last week’s pitiful excuse for a blog post?

I’ll start again.

The Fire Pit I’m Not Using

 

We did not use the driftwood fire pit on the picturesque, pebbly beach shoreline in front of the Obstruction Pass beach house we rented on Orcas Island. Even in the San Juans, there are burn restrictions due to the Washington state drought. No matter – it made for a nice sitting-and-watching-the-ocean perch.

For the first three nights during our Orcas stay we were fortunate enough to have guests from nearby Bellingham  join us at the house. It was great fun to be able to visit with friends JT the 18^th, JST, and their delightful daughter LT (who knows way too many 80’s songs for a sixteen year old [1]).

So, yes, we did not have fires in the fire pit. We did hike and dine and hike and kayak and hike some more…

 

White strip of paper, taped to Obstruction Pass State Park outhouse near hiking trail, reads “Lovely Ladies Live Here.” [2]

 We also explored Orcas by foot and car and made a day trip to Shaw Island …

MH by the Shaw Island Seedshack – an honor system seed store, in the proverbial middle of nowhere. 

and shook our heads (and sometimes, our fists) at all the deer , [3] bought some beautiful pottery and checked out the local art. I’d include my favorite island road sign in the latter category:

*   *   *

And now, a word about the deer.

 

According to several Islanders I queried, soft-hearted civilians as well as animal-rights activists resist efforts to cull the massive amount of deer on the islands. A good  portion of land in the San Juans is owned privately, and the limited amount of hunting allowed does jack squat to curb the expanding deer population. For the deer, this is a recipe for disaster: deer compete for limited territory and food resources and have few career opportunities (read: road kill).

Recipe for Disaster

Ingredients:
– 2 cups too many deer
–  1 tablespoon no deer predators

Instructions:

1. Steal a six pack of Cheap American beer ® from the drunken hunters that will inevitably be enlisted to thin the deer ranks (the hunters will likely not notice, nor even mind, as they’re schlepping another five cases of PBR in the cabs of their Ford F-150 pickups).
2. Empty one can of beer into an oven-safe mixing bowl.
3. Drink the rest of the six pack.
4. Perform five rounds of The Antler Dance.
5. Ignore step #4.
6. There is no step #6.

 

Lemme see, so far we have five pictures of someone else’s holiday and one half-assed recipe. Is this is as bad as looking at someone’s vacation slides?

*   *   *

Where was I? After our week long stay at Orcas we took the ferry to Lopez Island and spent two magical nights with our friends-who-are so-fortunate-as-to-live-there, the gracious and witty J and D C-R. C-R, as in, not to be confused with CCR.

Hey, is this my first allusion to Creedence Clearwater Revival in my blog? After all these years, there should have been more.

*   *   *

Once again and as always, I digress.

Thanks to the lovely and talented George Rede, [4] , Oregonian/Oregon Live reporter and Orcas Island lover, for his helpful suggestions for sightseeing and recreation on the island. One of his must-dos included hiking around or kayaking on Mountain Lake (we did both).

 

*   *   *

Dateline: A Tuesday on vacation, [5] in the later afternoon of the day when we took a day trip to Shaw Island.  I passed the time waiting for the return ferry to Orcas Island by scrambling about the rocks near the pier by the ferry terminal. As I climbed back up to the road my tie-dyed tee shirt elicited a thumbs up and commentary from a man passing by (whom I judged to be in his early sixties):

“That’s some great tie dye! I know tie-dye – ‘Summer of love,’ yeah, I was there!”

Instead of the comment I wanted to make – about the sophistication of today’s tie-dyes, where back in the 60s they were basically just color blotches that resembled what scrambled eggs would look like to someone on a bad acid trip – I merely smiled and returned his thumbs up.

“If you can remember the 1960s, you weren’t really there.”
Robin Williams

*   *   *

Department of Wasted Youth

So I return from vacation and discover, while listening to an interview with Lily Tomlin, that the pictures and art I have framed [6] for all these years – it just pains me to have to type this, but I’ve been doing it wrong. Or rather, it seems I haven’t fully appreciated the practice and have settled for less. You see, I’ve learned, via a blurb on a Fresh Air podcast, that sponsor Framebridge has “reinvented the framing experience.”

Just think of the time I wasted, bordering and encasing cherished family photographs and paintings without thought or purpose, when I could have had a framing experience.

Oh, sure, now they tell me.

 

*   *   *

Department of Spoiled Surprises
Aka, So I return from vacation, 2.0

…and discover two packages had arrived while we were gone.  Having received a shipping notice just before we left for the San Juans, I knew that one of the packages, the one addressed to moiself, was the present I’d ordered for MH’s birthday: a new card game from the twisted creative mind responsible for one of our favorite cartoons, the Oatmeal. I let that sit while MH opened the package addressed to himself. Given the timing of the package’s arrival, I thought it might be a present from his parents (his birthday was yesterday). Instead, it was something he’d ordered for himself,  unbeknownst to moiself. It was the same same card game I’d gotten him.

So. Yeah. Happy birthday.

Now we are the proud owners of multiple copies of Exploding Kittens.

At least I know he would have enjoyed the surprise (if it had truly been a surprise) in that classic, No-really-it’s-just-what-I-wanted way.

*   *   *

May all your surprises be genuine,
May you remember whatever decade wherein you were really there,
and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

 

[1] I blame the parents, don’t you?

[2] Noted by the alert JTS of Bellingham, Washington. No, we don’t know what it means.

[3] Bipeds exterminated the deer’s natural predators, and there are waaaaay too many  Bambis on the islands.

[4] As you may remember, I generally use initials and/or acronyms in this blog…except for people in the public eye, however you define that. Oh, wait, it’s however I define that.

[5] Vacation mindset: the date isn’t important.

[6] Yeah right – make that, paid for someone else to frame.