weekly gratitude

thank you target boots for being surprisingly wonderful 

___________

I've become increasingly lax with my weekly gratitude schedule lately. I used to be so on it, every Sunday night, bam! 

Life? Is this what happens when life catches up with you? I mean 'cause if so, I guess I'll take it. Being busy outside of a computer screen keeps this seasonal affective disordered person in line, man!

Anyway, where did I leave off? Oh yes...

___________

1. Thank you for farmhouse dinners! Mari recently had a dream come true when she moved into a four bedroom farmhouse in the middle of a vineyard in the heart of the Willamette Valley (I know... I know... I die...). I swear, if I've seen anyone live with their deepest hopes and dreams held in an open palm, willing to let God work his wonders, it's Mari. And when it comes to seeing the dramatic and amazing results of living a surrendered life? Damn. She's got that down. So when she invited Jodi and me over Friday night for a dinner of spicy steamed mussels, crusty bread and homemade salads (and wine... You don't get three girls in the wine industry together without a couple few bottles) we launched ourselves into her new home. It was the perfect evening. I felt like I was living in an issue of Kinfolk. Sometimes I think back on the train of events that brought me back to Portland after I tried moving back to California and how if I hadn't taken that leap of faith - if I hadn't listened to that little voice telling me Portland was home - I would never have met those two. To be honest, if I think about it too much I get all verklempt. Because for so many reasons, Mari and Jodi have become so vitally important in my life. Kindred spirits. And what's more, and what brings me to my next point, is this...

our kinfolk dinner

2. Thank you for kindred spirits. In my self-induced exile the past couple weeks I've done a lot of thinking on this while posted up in my little hermitage. How did I get so lucky? I mean truly. There are not a lot of people (or so I'd imagine) that can say they have even one and I feel sometimes that I'm hoarding them all for myself (sorry I'm not sorry)! From meeting Katy some fifteen years ago and finding that we had, I'm sure of it, been freakishly linked in some cosmic way all of our lives (aside from both being only children with our feet planted relatively firmly on the ground to being, I'm pretty sure, only a chromosome away from being gay men, what with our mutual love of musical theater and curious obsession with Liza Minnelli long before Arrested Development made her cool again), to Brigette and Blake in college and effectively finding my other two-thirds (see again: Liza Minnelli and gay men), to what would seem on the outside, based on exteriors of punk rock & tattoos alongside what appears to be someone slapped with a J.Crew catalog (J.Crew here meaning spending enough time on Pinterest to deceive people into thinking F21 and Target are J.Crew - I digress) a rather unlikely pairing between Robin and me but what in reality is one of my most treasured friendships (and as I've said before, don't know what I would have done a couple years ago without her and Dean - forever grateful), to my sister-friends Laura, Maria and Ashley, to the crazy world of blogging we live in somehow orchestrating friendships that never would have existed otherwise with Kate and Jenn (my goodness, I promise, photos coming this week!), and bringing it back to Mari and Jodi. These people are just good for my heart. Good for my soul. 

3. Thank you God, again, for coming through... Again. Ha! Like I should have doubted it? I'm so silly sometimes. Let's just say that something I prayed about and got a distinct "No!" about (which, since I was hoping for a "Yes, go for it kid!", caused me to be little miffed at the time) was recently revealed to be a fantastic show of God knowing better than me! Seriously good call on that "No!" Big Chief! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! 

::bullet dodged::

___________

So if you've beared (bore?) with me this long, I thank you! 

Glad to get that all off my chest. 

Stay tuned this week for a whole. lotta. pictures.

(mostly of California's natural beauty and cute babies)