Thursday, May 1, 2014

We Made it to May!

Here we are: We have made it to May! I can't believe that after this year, this super long year where I thought I felt every minute of every day, is just about a full notch in my belt. Rob finishes his finals next week and then he's on vacation. We are getting married next MONTH. I guess the most confusing part is that this has crept up on me. How could it creep, when I stared at the calendar every single day? But it did.

I've been too busy just getting through each day -- work, wedding planning, gym, yoga, cooking, cleaning, dog walking, sleeping -- that I haven't written in this blog in awhile, and I feel bad about it. That post about tofu was from March and I was too lazy to upload the pictures until now. That's how busy I've been! I think about blog writing and video game playing and novel reading and then I get to the end of the day and I'm too tired to do any of it. 

Now that the days are a lot longer -- it's light til 8pm! -- I feel like my brain is coming up from hibernation and my consciousness is slowly pouring back in. And with this big school-related milestone coming up next week, I gotta piggyback on the success that Rob has earned and pat myself on the back too, because we made it through year 1 of 4! This was the hard year, where we had to make friends and I had to find a job and we had to settle in and make a home in a remote town that was nothing like Brooklyn NY. And we did it! I am pretty proud of us, and so grateful for the family and friends that have helped us through it. Those that remembered us, flew out and visited us, sent us air-mail treats, wrote us postcards from home. Thank you guys. It means more than you'll know.

One of the things I've prided myself on was adjusting to the slow rhythm of the Palouse. My favorite part of New York was riding that energy wave, knowing what was open when, knowing which bus was coming next and the best path from A to B. It's harder out here with so few things to do and very few different ways to get there. But I've found a rhythm of sort. It's not the same, but it's mine.

Saturday mornings: Sage bakery is open. Only Fridays and Saturdays, but since I work Fridays, then Saturdays it is. If I'm headed to Lewiston, I stop for a soy latte. Or maybe I just go for the sake of it. It's 20 minutes down the road in the two-horse town of Unionville. You blink and you pass it. So it's almost like those bars that were hidden behind fake barbershop fronts. You had to be in the know. And I'm in the know! One of my favorites is the savory scone with pancetta and cheese and rosemary. Their sandwiches are fabulous -- roast beef with gorgonzola my favorite. Cinnamon buns. Macaroni salad. It's all amazing! No table service, just a nice lady or two behind the counter.




You would think that everyone would rave about a BBQ place that was just a few miles away over in Moscow, right? I mean, house-smoked meat! The stuff we would wait in line forever for back in Brooklyn! They have it here in Moscow and no one even freaking notices it. I don't get it. We'll head over on a Friday night and by the time we're done eating the place has cleared out and it's 8pm and they're ready to close up. I don't totally understand it but as long as they're open I don't really care. It's called CD's Smoke Pit and it's just a little tiny bit off the beaten path of Main St./6th St. Moscow. They have beer on tap that they serve in Mason jars. We always get the Animal Farm, which is like a big meat combo with chicken, ribs, brisket, 2 kinds of sausage links. The cole slaw is pretty fantastic too. The dinner rolls are terrible but they're free so I'll forgive it.



There aren't a lot of events out here. Pullman has the Lentil Festival and that's seriously it for Pullman. But if you know the right people, they know when worthy things are happening in the Lewiston/Clarkston area. There was this beer festival that, despite the complete lack of ambiance, had a pretty okay beer selection. I texted this to a friend and she asked if I was at a PTA meeting. It made me drink more beer than I was expecting to. Maybe this was part of the Lewiston brewmeister's mastermind plan all along.



Then last weekend was the Lewiston Dogwood Festival, with artisans on a green and food trucks! Actual food trucks. Sometimes doing things that remind me of home make me miss home more. Snoop Dogg last weekend and all the kids left before the encore so there was no encore and nobody knew it except me and Rob and like five other people. I get on the bus and I get a wave of nostalgia but only 3 other people are on the bus and it cost me a quarter. This is another example. I missed the quirky crafts and funky eats of Smorgasburg and only being in a place like this really reminded me of how much I missed it. But I bought some handmade soap from a girl with an Etsy shop and had a huckleberry lemonade because where else can you get huckleberry anything and I felt a little better about it.


And now we do it all over again. Summer will come and we'll hopefully get to play a little like last year: tennis and basketball and jogging, only with friends this time! Maybe we'll go camping, and fishing on the river, now that we know where to go. I'll show Rob around Lewiston because he's never been, and I'll take him to Sage Bakery, because he's never been there either. We'll hit the Lentil Festival to mark the start of a second year here and start all over again. I'll buy snow tires when winter comes and I'll go the back roads way to town on extra slippery days. I'll keep an eye out for robins in berry trees when spring comes and I'll celebrate at the dogwood festival that isn't anything like the cherry tree fest in Brooklyn and isn't supposed to be. 

All the locals love to tell me that I'll fall in love with the Palouse and will abandon my plan to move home and will never want to leave. They are wrong. But I am confident that we can ride out another three years out here, and I can entertain visitors or occupy myself for a few days when Rob has fallen into another Psychology book. It's a pretty good feeling. So even though I don't have final exams next week, I'm gonna celebrate with the best of them when they're over. One school year down, three to go. It's an accomplishment worth a pancetta scone and huckleberry ice cream, for sure.
 


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