Our weekend

G was off Fri and Mon (for some reason), and my mom had been asking us to come visit, so I decided we would come on the weekend. We flew out 9AM on Friday to Portland (OR), and took their light rail into the city (how cool is THAT!). It just cost $2 and is entirely aboveground so we got a nice tour of the city, too.

Met my mom and then a Portland friend for lunch, went to Nordstrom (bought another bottle of my perfume--Clinique Happy--the things I do to get my mom free parking!), and then headed out. It's a 2.5 hr drive to my mom's but it was beautiful. It was very chilly (33F/0.5C) but only snowed lightly a few times, and little to no snow on the road. But the trees and hills--OMG. So beautiful with their layer of snow. My mom's fancy Volvo told us the outside temp as we drove and it lights up a little snowflake-light when it gets below something like 36.

Up at Mom's, it didn't snow and barely rained at all. I visited Max's grave. Too funny--two misunderstandings out of that. I mentioned Max's grave to my mom, and she was startled, not remembering me burying her body. Uh, I didn't; I buried the little wooden box with her ashes. And G thought we would dig up the box (LOL) and look at the ashes. Um, no, sweetie; just visit the spot. I found it pretty easily. The woods up there are so pretty. There was soft moss almost everywhere on the ground and lots of trees. It's a lot lighter in the winter; I guess I hadn't realized how many of the trees are deciduous.

We did manage to get to the beach one day (I think Mom just wanted all of us out of her hair), with Mom's dog. It took a while to convince G 1) that one does, indeed, go to the beach in the winter, and 2) that one does NOT go into the water in the winter (or really, in the summer, as this beach has serious undertow/riptides). We found some good sticks, the dog got some good runs in, G found a great old stump to climb on, and I took some photos of him.

And mom and I dyed some wool! What an interesting process. I thought she'd done it millions of times and would be very comfortable. Um, not. Dying involves a lot of math (figuring out how much of each ingredient is dependent on the weight of the wool you're going to dye), and we weighed almost everything on her triple-beam balance scale, which required that we weigh the bowl or paper we were weighing on *first* and then subtract that weight from the item being weighed. Mom is mathphobic; it's challenging. And although I liked the result color, Mom didn't and wants to re-dye it redder. Phew this is going to be a long process--we only got 1/3 of the wool dyed because her dyepot is 5 gallons.

I also got some knitting done and bought a ton of knitting stuff. I finished a watch cap as we arrived and knit almost all of the foot of the 2nd sock for her (on size 1 needles, ugh, they're so small and it goes slowly). We picked out some yarn for a felted hat she wants (I thought she had felted several times, too; not so). I'd found the pattern a while ago, so she chose some black wool yarn and some beautiful variegated wool/mohair yarn for the top. It'll be interesting--to felt something, you knit it HUGE and loose and then put it in the washer on hot, checking every 5 mins. We haven't decided who's doing the felting.

I also delivered the "knotted" scarf I'd knit for her from some black/multi/slightly sparkly wool she'd admired in a yarn shop last time she was here. She loves it. I think she wore it 3 out of the 4 days we were there! It really looks great on her.

G behaved well most of the time and was a COMPLETE pill part of the time. If he still napped, I think that would have made a huge difference. As it was, after one of the fits, we went home and he crawled into bed and fell asleep (at 4:30 PM). That was tough because Mom & I were planning on going out that night, and the babysitter was arriving within the hour! I didn't want him to wake up and be surprised to only find the babysitter, so I woke him as the sitter arrived. He met the sitter, crawled back into bed (skipping dinner), and slept all night.

Our flights were very easy. We brought our clothes with us, G's in his backpack and mine (and toiletries etc.) in my backpack. I was pleased to discover online that my backpack, if not packed too full, is within the size limits for a carry-on. Mom managed to secure a booster for the weekend, so we carried everything on. That was new to me!

A friend dropped us off for the trip up, but we took 2 buses home on this end. It would have been seamless if the 2nd bus had ever come (I thought maybe it had been a minute or two early, but we picked up another woman who'd been waiting even earlier than I was and she said it never came) so we waited an extra 1/2 hour before it came. Then 5 mins later, we were home. :) (ironic!) We are both nearly giddy about public transportation, so taking the bus home was really kind of fun.

We had a great visit with my mom.