Famous Person Sighting

Traffic was difficult getting Sophie the couple of miles to school for her lacrosse practice tonight.  After inching along for some time, we finally figured out what the hold up was - a famous person.  Nope, not Obama.  Not a celebrity being arrested for protesting.  It was.....Ronald McDonald.  Seriously.  Hanging out in front of the neighborhood post office, shaking hands and posing for photos.  Not exactly the person I would have bet we would sight stopping traffic in DC!

When I got home and showed Xavier the photo, his response was "That's scary.  Seriously.  Clowns are the scariest of all".  Guess Ronald doesn't hold the same allure for his generation as it did for mine - thankfully!

Home

I'm winding up a busy week after getting back from Seattle/Vashon.  Having just returned from one island, the kids and I spent Easter weekend on another island - Chincoteague Island, VA.  It's a short bike ride over a bridge to a National Wildlife Reserve, Assateague Island - with stunning, undisturbed beaches on the Atlantic.  I think we needed a bit of island life to help us reenter city life.

During the time on Vashon, I made the very difficult decision to give up my option to purchase the home we had been living in there.  Things got too complicated and too expensive.  However, it has made me - and the kids - really consider what "home" is.  We've traveled a lot and always considered Vashon home. But, owning a home on Vashon felt like a way to "guarantee" that it is home.  In our own ways, we each got to the realization that home is wherever we are and that Vashon is still our anchor and owning a home - or not - doesn't change that.  Somehow, working through that has made this week in DC feel more settled and more "ok" than it had before.  Right now, we're in DC and it's our home for now.  Vashon is where we will keep going back to and we'll make the most of the adventures we have when we travel the world!

Easter at Assateague Island - on the "other" coast

Rosie -making the most of being a DC Dog

Bike Racks, Sun Breaks and Grunge

Yes, it's a Seattle cliche.  I'm sitting in a Whole Foods on a Sunday morning drinking a cappuccino, strangely there is grunge on the overhead stereo (not sure which is worse on a Sunday morning - grunge or musak), we are experiencing one of the rare "sun breaks" lauded by the weather forecasters and bike rack-laden Subarus are passing by in large numbers.  No doubt I'm back in Seattle.

I've spent much of the past few days in Vashon Island (check out today's NY Times Travel Section on Vashon)  staying on a sailboat moored in the Burton Marina, just across the street from the now famous Burton Coffee stand.  It's been mostly pouring rain with no sense of where the sun might be, but the goslings and bald eagles make up for the weather.

Being back, I'm mostly struck by the slower pace, politeness, "colorful" characters and general sense of people being outside - no matter the weather.  As I sat in front of my daughter's former middle school while she was visiting last week, I realized that the kids were outside during lunch, few with coats and mostly running around totally ignoring the rain.  In DC, outside lunch is cancelled if there's even a hint of rain and Xavier isn't allowed outside - pretty much anytime it's under 70 degrees - without a coat.  In DC, even when it's been near 80 degrees, Xavier wears cords and a flannel shirt nearly every day.  Here, he went to his former school for the day in shorts and a t-shirt - all set to be outside in the rain!  Not sure what that's about.

I guess I'm classically caught in between 2 places.  There is much I am learning to like about DC and much I miss about Seattle & Vashon.  I don't quite feel "home" either place but am ok for the moment in observing how similar and different both places are and how each has elements which reflect the various parts of myself.

My Vashon "Home" for the week (notice the raindrops in the water - this was during a "light" rain).