the hunt

ryan and i are apartment hunting. our lease is up at the end of June, and we found out last month that our building (4 townhouses) is going into foreclosure. fortunately for us, we will probably not at all be effected by the foreclosure. the house is going on the market, yadda yadda, how does it feel to know that the rent you pay is not actually going toward the roof over your head!? also fortunate, we have a rental management company, and have not been abandoned. another fortunate turn, we have only been here 3 years, versus one of our neighbors who is going on 14+. hopefully for her she gets to stay, i’m sure this is truly her home.

the past 3 years has been fun. i always wanted to live in a house with stairs. there are positives, and i’m sure when we find the right place to go, we will look back somewhat fondly on this place. but i will not shed a tear if it is torn down and recreated either. sometimes the floor gives out, and i worry that the upstairs bathroom will one day end up in the living room. oh, and an earthquake would render it a pile of toothpicks, if you know what i mean. still, it has become our home, even if the home in it is really just made up by the three of us.

as i search for a new roof, i’m struck by the crazy vacancy wars happening in this town. we are decidedly getting a steal here (see above, bathroom falling through ceiling) and we will be hard pressed to find something similar. you see, i can look out of my bedroom window and see downtown. i can walk there in merely a mile. my bus ride to work takes 15 minutes and i don’t want an hour commute. my list of don’t wants and wants adds up pretty evenly, and lets just say barring some sort of windfall or fantastical promotion (hey, it could happen someday!) we don’t have a lot of choices. close but in an old creaky shoebox, far away in a house and close to nothing. for a person who doesn’t drive and one who depends on timely arrival 5 days a week this creates quite a situation. did you know that parking in my office building is $215 per month!? not in my budget, sorry.

this has lead me to pinterest, and inspiring small space decoration. i see us definitely downgrading in size and hopefully upgrading in other areas. like bathroom space. and clean floors. and uncompromised foundations. i’ll keep you posted.

the thing about blogs

i read an ever-changing list of blogs. mostly they contain more photos than words, mostly they are bright and positive and not political. fashion, design, lifestyle. the thing about blogs is that things sometimes look perfect. the bookshelf ironically color coded. the kitchen clean and tidy with matching accessories. blogs give me this longing for another space, a new set of ‘things’. i feel that my own environment does not match what i see online, and that breeds a strange dissatisfaction.

my home is not organized and comes with no dreamy filter. there are often crumbs on the counter and coffee stains near the sink. i don’t have a paper towel roll holder, so the paper towels just sit out on the counter, for all to see. we eat dinner every night at our coffee table, because we have no space for a dinner table, and our TV is usually on. my bookshelf is dusty and may have various items balancing on top at any given time. did i mention things get dusty? my cat has a million toys that i can’t seem to pair down that overflow their basket and flow down our stairs. the front windows need to be cleaned, and i have a $10 mirror propped up against the wall where i decide how i look each day. things aren’t perfect here, but i could rearrange them for the sake of a photograph to make it enviable. i really could, and then they would pop back out into normal life mode, filling the space up again.

i love reading blogs, but real life isn’t always so defined. it is messy and dusty, sometimes really dusty, but it is mine and it is honest and i love it.

april 2012

life since the holidays has been a tough adjustment. considering our options, trying to stay dry and warm, finding time to do something other than work eat and sleep. march marked the ‘official’ 5 year anniversary of me and the day job. the next few weeks should bring little sleep followed by a possible huge and exciting change. portland has been a cold cloudy mess lately, and while the rest of the country is experiencing record warm and spring-like weather, i have awoken to snow a half dozen times. and windy sideways rain that makes me wonder why i even attempt to look presentable when i leave the house.

ninja, always finding the sliver of sunshine.

looking in

last weekend i attended a crazy portland event. Pendleton, well known for their amazing blankets and plaid, created the super hip Portland Collection last year. if you don’t know about this, you clearly don’t read enough fashion blogs – and probably spend your time doing much more productive things. however, the Portland Collection was an inspiration. by inspiration i mean it made me buy a less expensive plaid dress from LLBean Signature that someone might mistake for the Portland Collection. no offense LLBean, i love the dress. at this point in my life however, i am not yet in the market to spend $500 on a coat or $180 on a skirt. so when i saw the ad for a 70% off Portland Collection sale, it was meant to be. my tense and stressful nature caused me to arrive 20 minutes before the doors opened to find myself with only about 15-20 people in line. the sale started at 9, and by the time that i left, at 9:15, everything worth getting was gone. i came away with the beautiful oswego mini skirt, and while if given the chance i might have taken a smaller size (and the beautiful black & white coat i tried to convince another girl not to buy), i LOVE it. i wore it for the first time friday and received numerous outlandish compliments. and so, i wanted to share with you two photos from the Portland Collection website that document my shopping game face. luckily, i am not the center focus of either, but i’m there! don’t mess with me and my shopping.

photos taken by and for portlandcollection.net

vacation part 4

and in the end… we went to disneyland.

we rode every ride we wanted, more than once. the photos don’t show the millions and millions of people we were at disneyland with, but they were there. in the mornings as we walked to the gate, behind us in line everywhere with their strollers and children and extended families, girl scout troops, little league teams. i increased my vinylmation collection, drank glowy drinks and probably shook up my brain more than ultimately necessary. it was a great way to end our holiday vacation.

vacation part 3

there are four parts to my vacation. i know you are wondering if i will ever get on to real life things happening now instead of a month ago – soon. the last time i had an out of town vacation was in april 2010, so excuse me while i draw this one out. honestly nothing too crazily amazing is happening in real-time kateventureland, so you are lucky i have this to share!

after the hike we spent a few days recuperating. i had my first ever massage. we broke away from our on-the-road starbucks fiending and found some real coffee shops. we visited ASU and had tsoynamis on more than one occasion. we played with our holiday gifts, and helped ninja play with his. it was wonderful.

vacation part 2

before the holidays, ryan and i decided we had some unfinished business with the superstition mountains. in 2006, pre-ninja and marriage, vegetarianism and a smattering of other life changing events, we traveled to visit ryan’s parents in their new arizona home. we went on water slides, relaxed in the sunshine, and attempted to hike the superstition mountains. our first attempt went something like this:

 
 

that is as close as we got, as far as we made it to the top of the flat iron. in our defense, it was a warm April day. there were bugs and lizards and possibly snakes somewhere. there was little for us to do but just give up.
5 and a half years later, with arizona and a 3 week vacation on the horizon, we decided a real effort should be made this time around. we are healthier, have matured, live a more active lifestyle. somehow we felt up for the challenge. ryan had hiked it as a child, how hard could it really be? plus we knew there would be lots of non-vegan dessert to be had over the holidays and hiking seemed like a fair way to justify it. and so, on december 26th we packed up a backpack full of water, some food, cameras and cell phones, and headed out.

 
 
  

 
    

trust me when i tell you that this was one of the most difficult things we have ever done together. there is a reason i took very few photos from the ‘during’ process of our hike. maybe there are several reasons. as soon as the hike started getting difficult i started getting annoyed and just pushing ahead. i barely let ryan stop for water, and i just could NOT believe how long and rough of a hike it was! realistically, i knew nothing about what point we were hiking to, or that it would mostly be scrambling up rocks holding on for your life. oh, and no one told me that after 3 hours of hiking over rocks you would have to scale a 12 foot rock wall in which your only leverage point was a tree growing out of the rock about 6 feet up. !!! not to mention families with children and dogs just raged on ahead of us, one perk of hiking it right after christmas. if we had fallen, someone would have definitely found us. if we had wandered off into rocky territory looking for trail markers that were not there, someone at least would have heard our screams. but it was all worth it in the end, as the photos show. we loved it, we felt accomplished, and we were thankful when we made it down in one piece with no broken bones. i did skin my knee, and by the end i could barely walk, but hey, we didn’t quit!

vacation part 1

we had a wonderful vacation that felt quite full of adventure. taking the cat anywhere is usually an adventure – he is afraid of the smallest and strangest things. like when you gargle water, or move a blanket underneath him. so, what was an end-of-world scenario for the cat, was stressful and exciting at the same time for ryan and i. here are some photos from part 1 – christmas.

happy holidays

wrapping up things around the house before vacation is tough. this will be our first christmas away from ‘our’ home in 4 years. fortunately we have enjoyed the tree for almost a month, and while ninja is nowhere near over it, i feel OK. the holidays slip by every year and i never feel like i have enjoyed them enough. it isn’t about the gifts and the anticipation of christmas day for me. it is about the season, the lights and music, the warmth. i’m not sure ryan understands it, but you really need only look around to see the special events that surround this season and no other. yes, consumerism – but isn’t that always present these days? i don’t feel pressure to give gifts, to shop for meaningless things because the TV says that i must, but i know others do. that is not what slips by for me.

regardless, i’m looking forward to being back on the road, visiting new as well as familiar places. ready for a little change.

 

what’s in a name?

yep, i changed the name of this little blog. as it sat unused for so long, ryan decided to branch off into a blog-itory of his own. i sense life changes up ahead, and the name and focus of this blog, once it revives, may change again. for now, please check out the ryan, of kate and ryan in portland fame, over here:

click on the photo above to be taken to ninja defense