Batten Down The Hatches
Hallo everyone. I’m back in the hotel room and glad to be drying off. Let me explain–
No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
My youngest sister’s flight for Costa Rica left last night at 10:45PM. We were with her at the airport until about 10:15, watching until she disappeared on the other side of security, waving every few moments while she could still see us. This was followed by (finally) tears from my middle sister and my own sweet self, no longer having to keep them in for Sister Three’s sake. Our baby, all grown up and traveling the world. God, I hope her flight was safe and that right now she’s enjoying a spot of something sweet on the beach.
Sister Two hung around with us until about midnight or so, and I worried for the hour and half it took her to get home from Seattle. When she called to say she was home, safe, and studying for a chemistry final or some such (ah, the energy of youth) I was so keyed-up i couldn’t sleep. I’m glad I was there to help get Three on the plane, but it’s exhausting.
So that is how I came to be waking up at 1PM today, stumbling off in search of coffee and the Pike Place Market. The hotel shuttle ran us down there and we walked and looked (pictures will be forthcoming when I get home.) On the bottom level of Pike Place there’s a ghost, or quite a few ghosts, that is. (Just ask my friend Jefferson.) Rather too much fun for me, so I retreated in a hurry to the second floor, where I picked up a loverly shawl-scarf thing in green alpaca and silk that is warm and soft as I type this.
We exited the Market to find a monsoon-like rain coming down horizontally because of the wind. We walked six blocks, crooning and whistling “Singing in the Rain” like true Seattle champs, and finally arrived at the Pacific Place mall wet almost clear through our trenchcoats. I stayed in Barnes and Noble (where I DID buy books, thankyouverymuch, Kiwi) and dried a bit as the Sullen Teen lost himself in a video-game store until it was time for the hotel shuttle to come pick us up. Traffic was awful because of the flooding.
We arrived back at the hotel, happy to be warmer and drier, and found a notice taped to the door–a letter to all guests about an impending windstorm (sixty mile an hour winds and more heavy rain, oh my) and the things to do if there’s a power outage. (Little things like not lighting candles are high on the list.) But still, it’s warm and dry. My boots are soaked, my feet looked like prunes, my trench is still dripping along with my hair, and the Sullen Teen is blowing his nose after a very hot shower and dry clothes. I have rarely been so happy to crawl into dry clothes in my life, though all our purchases were safely wrapped in a hemp bag that got wet but didn’t let more than a small bit of humidity through. The heater is running, and I’m about to go down and get a glass of wine before coming back up and watching the idiot box for a few hours. I’m warm, safe, dry, and spent the whole day wandering around feeding the Muse.
Doesn’t get any better than this. I’m ready to go home, yes…but not quite yet. I think I’ll sit up and watch the windstorm move in tonight. Tomorrow, when everything calms down, the museum sounds like a good bet. My Muse is happily slurping up all sorts of images and textures, and I am certain to have an explosion of productivity when I get back.
But not just yet. I have a storm to watch and a museum to visit. And not so incidentally, prunelike toes to dry out and elevate.
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