What an interesting weekend! I’ve been kind of sleep deprived for a couple days (bad insomnia), so my filters aren’t on, nor my abilities (I think) to truly convey what a weird and magical couple days I’ve had. Tara arrived on Friday night, and we relaxed with Mom on the back porch, chatting about books and politics and Brothers & Sisters, Tara’s new addiction (thanks to me).

Saturday included:
--breakfast at Francis Restaurant (if you haven’t been there and tried their bourbon butter French toast, I’m not sure we can be friends anymore)
--a stop at the Title Wave Used Bookstore, where I geeked out and nabbed myself some keepers
--bopping to a couple garage sales. I nabbed a pair of skull/crossbones pajama bottoms.
--watching Wendy and Lucy, filmed in the Portland area. Stories about people and their pets break my heart, and this one had a sad-happy ending. Jerry often asks me: “Why do you always write about dead pets?” Because I am haunted by some stories in my own past, and trying to figure out this kind of loss.
--dinner at Pastini’s (yes, we were gluttonous and treated ourselves all weekend). I ate up that sage butter butternut squash ravioli like nobody’s business.
--the TORI AMOS concert! She played some of my faves – Precious Things, Black-Dove, Siren, Joni Mitchell’s River, Winter, to name a few – and she looked smashing in her long blue gown and those kick-ass heels that could seriously send someone to the moon.
--an…interesting young woman in line who told Mom, Tara, and me her life story in about 15 minutes without taking a breath
--seeing L at the concert, whom I haven’t seen in years. We had a brief, powerful conversation, and I could tell he’s in a much better place, that he’s wiser for some lessons offered him (as am I, with my own lessons). He asked me if we could maybe hang out now and then, reconnect, build up a friendship again, and I told him that I felt those doors were better left closed, that I’d moved on. We never know what the future holds, do we? Any door can be reopened. But for me, I feel it’s best to see my time with L as a chapter in the past. It was, in the end, really wonderful to give him a hug, to see that he’s grown up. And to also feel my own strength in my veins, to know I’ve lived and learned.
--dancing at Red Cap/Boxxes after the concert (you were all there in spirit, dancing to Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” with me)

Mom and I awoke on Sunday and headed out to an Ecstatic Dance class with Dawn at Nia, a studio downtown. We grooved to ambient tribal beats, moving in both hushed and frenzied tones across the hardwood floor, looking out the huge windows at skyscrapers (Portland’s version of them anyway) and fog and early risers walking down the quiet sidewalks. After the class, the three of us headed out for coffee, and then I whisked myself away to Julie’s, where we workshopped my novel for a few hours over pizza, pastries, and fizzy sodas in champagne glasses.

All in all, I packed A LOT in this weekend! Thing is, everything was refreshing and spiritual and charged with good energy, even at the weird moments. And there were lots of little connections and crevices not mentioned here, for sake of semi-brevity. Everything just felt….web-like from start to finish, Friday through Sunday.

And now it’s Monday, and I haven’t slept well since Friday night, and I’m kind of in a haze. But I’ll take this haze in exchange for a weekend that deserves its own episode of a quirky TV show.