Okay, much like my time with Jennifer actually spanned both Days Two and Three of my Birth Week, my time with Ivan actually spanned both Days Three and Day Four. Unlike with Jennifer, though, I did not stay with Ivan at his place overnight. Strictly speaking, I spent two and a half hours with him on Sunday night, and then four hours with him yesterday morning -- as it happened, pretty much immediately prior and immediately after his graveyard shift at the St. Francis Center for Rehab, which is next door to St. Joseph Medical Center in Bellingham. I even gave him a ride to work Sunday night, so my time with him that evening really immediately preceded his work shift.

He wore the same outfit, in his work scrubs, both times I saw him. He didn't go home first when he got off work yesterday morning, and instead just texted me when he was headed downtown. I had to tell him I was still about half an hour from finishing getting ready but then I would go meet him. The AirBnB I stayed at was quite close to downtown so I got there in no time. Ivan's waiting, which was at a downtown Bellingham Starbucks, was mostly just until I was ready to go myself.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. First I want to tell you this iteration of The Saga of Coordinating a Visit with Ivan. My plan all along was to do a loop around Puget Sound to connect all the different geographical spots I had to hit, preferably even including a stop in Olympia for the requisite Birth Week Bike Ride with Dad: from there to Shelton to stay the night with Jennifer; from there to Port Townsend to see Auntie Rose; from there to Bellingham to see Ivan; from there back home. That particular loop, in its entirety, would have looked like this.

But, in the early days of the past year, I thought I could take advantage of Jennifer's typical day off as a mail carrier on Tuesdays, and that I could schedule it so that I could spend the day of my actual birthday with Ivan -- as it's also his birthday (nine years my junior). Hell, as of last year's Birth Week, Ivan was still traveling Eastern Europe and planning to return to settle in Vancouver, B.C. upon his return in May, so I actually thought my Birth Week visit with him would be in Vancouver. I had driving itineries set and everything, taking the ferry to Victoria on my birthday because you ride it free on your birthday, and then ferrying from Victoria to Vancouver. So much for that plan! Ivan was unable to find satisfactorily gainful employment in Vancouver and rearranged his plans, moving down to Bellingham only three months after moving to Vancouver -- that being the reason I went to visit Vancouver last August, so I could visit at least once while he still lived there. So then, the Birth Week itinerary switched to visiting him in Bellingham, where Ivan was now living to get a hypnotherapy degree from Western Washington Univerisity while supporting himself with yet another nursing job.

When Ivan was visiting me in February, I asked if I could stay a couple of nights at his place -- my aim was to save money on lodging. I always had it in the back of my mind that Ivan would find a way out of hosting me, though; that's kind of his M.O. He doesn't quite have the social skill to master diplomacy in getting what he really wants, so he has a tendency to be agreeable about something until finding an excuse to get out of it at the last minute. I was prepared to deal with getting an AirBnB in Bellingham if I had to.

I should probably just resign myself to never being able to stay at Ivan's place, no matter where he's living. From my perspective, it's kind of only fair; we've offered him the spare room to stay in for free every time he visits Seattle after he moved out early last year, after all. I suppose it's possible it could be different if Ivan ever gets a place he's not sharing with roommates and actually has a usable spare room; I know that makes a difference.

In any case, just a couple of weeks ago I got a Facebook Message with him saying, Hey Matthew, I hate to have to do this, but we are going to need to reschedule your visit to Bellingham. I had requested the days off that you were going to visit, and my request was initially approved and then rescinded after my colleague on night shift unexpectedly quit. Now they are making me work extra hours because none of my other colleagues are willing to work nights and we are hideously understaffed. They did hire a replacement but she is brand new and won’t have a regular schedule until next month. I complained to management about the situation and they made it clear that they could not possibly care less. I am accustomed to being treated horribly unfairly in this field, but this is just too much. I really can’t do this much longer.

To be perfectly honest, I have a feeling a lot of this is true -- he does complain a lot about how overworked he is and how understaffed the place is -- but that maybe half of it is kind of bullshit. I mean, just over breakfast yesterday morning he said he was leaving for Vancouver "for a few days" for a birthday break. So how's it so easy for him to do that, then? Whatever, I knew it would be counterproductive to challenge it. And don't get me wrong, I totally get that his own birthday getaway would be, and should be, more important to him than my visit. The key point here is that there is no reason he just couldn't be up front about that, for instance, just telling me he would not have the ability to take extra time off at the beginning of a week he's already taking days off for other reasons. I think it just doesn't occur to Ivan to think in those terms, though, and it may or may not have to do with his being on the spectrum / having Asperger's. So, I always try to be more understanding about odd things like this with him than I might be with other people.

In any case, I still managed to work it to my advantage. By this time, that loop of driving had been pushed back to Saturday, because Jennifer said Saturday night was the best option for her as Sunday is the only day she can reliably get off work. That was the date I had already scheduled -- nearly as far back as last year's Birth Week -- to go boating with Heather from Des Moines Marina. This meant I could no longer work the stop in Olympia with this loop, and I would just have to drive down to Olympia again later in the week (I'm doing that tomorrow night). So now the loop, Saturday through Monday, looked like this.

And, I already had the ferry from Port Townsend to Whidbey Island reserved, which I did not want to waste. So I responded to Ivan, Well, shit. That really sucks, I’m sorry. Hmm. What hours do you work then? I already have lunch scheduled with my great aunt in Port Townsend on 4/28 and also a reservation that same day for the 5:25 ferry to Whidbey Island. So what if I, say, just get an AirBnB in Bellingham for that one night, and we just get together for brunch or lunch or something like that on Monday 4/29 before you go to work, whatever part of the day you’re available? I could just go explore Bellingham where you recommend on my own otherwise that day. Would it be at all possible to work out something to that effect?

I will admit this kind of suggests that I actually paid for the ferry -- and I had not. They do have a fee for late cancellation, but Ivan's message actually came in well early enough that I could have canceled that rersvation with no penalty. I just didn't want to. I wanted to honor the plans I had already made, and Ivan had at least on some level already committed to as well, and I just didn't see myself finally visiting Bellingham any other time.

He wrote back, I will see. I could call in sick I guess but I’ve taken several sick days so far this year. I replied, Okay. Even if you can't call in sick I'd love to meet for a bite to eat or something outside your work hours. And from there on out, any time I mentioned the plans he did not really push back. And, as I have already indicated, he never did call in sick, but he still spent both Sunday evening and yesterday morning with me. This still gives him two points on the next Social Review, which he would have gotten regardelss anyway (had I stayed two nights as originally planned, I would have gotten up and left this morning before we had a chance to socialize, and probably just afer he returned from work).

So anyway, I caught the 5:15 ferry to Coupeville, roughly halfway up Whidbey Island, and once on the island, it was about a 90-minute drive to the quite reasonably priced AirBnB I found in Bellingham ($45 with fees; listed price had been $35 but whatever). And once the inevitability of my coming to Bellingham had been established, I did otherwise just defer to Ivan as to what kind of time we spent together. Even if he could only have one or two meals together, I was ready to live with that. He actually was pretty generous with his time, all things considered.

While I was still in Port Townsend, he messaged me, ou are to meet me at my Fairhaven home once you arrive in Bellingham. 1031 13th Street. We can take a walk around my idyllic neighborhood and then have dinner 😋. He later suggested a Thai place, which would never have been my first choice on that particular day, only because I had done Thai with Scott and Elin last Wednesday; again with Jennifer in Shelton Saturday night; and yet again with those leftovers for breakfast the next morning. But, Thai places tend to have extensive menus, and I figured I could find something different than my typical Thai orders of either phad thai or fried rice with peanut sauce.

So I got to the AirBnB at roughly 7:30; the host was not home, but she has a system with her security that I found fairly clever: for each AirBnB guest, she programs it so the pin to get in is the last four digits of your phone number. I got in quite easily, put my bag on the chair in the room I was stayig in, took a few pictures of the place, and was off.

I realized I was rather low on gas and so I did stop at a Chevron to put $15 worth of gas in the tank, but still managed to get to Ivan's house maybe a quarter till 8:00. And after he had refused to let me inside the house he lived in (and hated) in Vancouver, he actually invited me inside this one for a minute and showed me around. Apparnetly the guy who owns the place is an engineer who commutes via carpool every day to Everett to work at Boeing every day, and the other roommate is going to school at Western to be an engineer. The house has three bedrooms, all of them upstairs; Ivan's is pretty small, at least considering how very spacious the house was otherwise -- it's roughly the same size as the guest room he lived in when living with Shobhit and me. One of the bedrooms has a picture window with a pretty great view of Bellingham Bay -- which could also be seen from the front room window downstairs. I took a picture of the view from his front porch.

I have a feeling Ivan would not have invited me in had any of his roommates been home, but none of them were. Come to think of it, I know he used to have three roommates there, not just the two, and now I have no idea where the third person slept. I should ask Ivan when I get a chance. Anyway, when I took him back to the house briefly before driving him to work Sunday night, he said, "Can I just come back in a few minutes? I just have to brush my teeth." A normal person would have offered to let me wait inside the house, but whatever. For Ivan, honestly, that was petty normal. Maybe he didn't want his roommates assuming I was someone he's hooking up with, I don't know.

He didn't take long, anyway. And when he returned he actually had a birthday present for me! A rather large bottle of Tuscan Herb Olive Oil made right there in Fairhaven, the neighborhood he lives in.

And before I drove him to work, he and I walked around that neighborhood a bit. He was already dressed for work, as I said in his scrubs, when I went to meet up with him. He took me down to a quite lenghty and pretty boardwalk that connected to a trail that went on up to Woods Coffee, a place he clearly goes to a lot (he had a refillable Woods Coffee tumbler), located in Boulevard Park on the waterfront.

We did a lot of walking on and around that waterfront, before we went to the Thai restaurant for dinner. The picture at the top of this post, of him and me together, was taken at a small park called Marine Park, also on the waterfont. It's not the most flattering photo of him -- he'd never let me post that to Facebook -- but it's the only picture I got of the two of us together this visit, so I'm keeping it.

He actually had another Thai place in mind than I thought, but when we walked to it, it was closed. Then we found the "On Rice" place I had thought he initially meant, and we ate there. I had a sweet and sour vegetable stir fry with pineapple in it that I quite liked. Ivan very much liked his dish too; apparently he had never eaten there.

We did a little more walking through his neighborhood after dinner; I got some nice sunset photos and a few shots around the neighborhood. And soon after, I was driving him to work, where I dropped him off right at the door.

When I got back to the AirBnB, Janette, the host, was in the living room, watching this week's The Long Night -- battle of Winterfell with the White Walkers -- episode of Game of Thrones. I was like, "I can't watch! No spoilers!" She said she was re-watching the episode and would start it over from the beginning if I liked, but I was waiting to watch with Shobhit. I needed to get ready for bed anyway, as Ivan said he got off work at 7 a.m. and had suggested we get breakfast after. "I probably should get ready for bed too," she said, and I did not see her again that evening. I did message her to make sure I would not be in her way in the morning when I used the one bathroom in the house, and she told me she would be out doing yoga between 6:30 and 7:30.

So, that was when I went to get ready yesterday morning. She was back by the time I was done, and Ivan was already ready to get breakfast. So I only spoke to Janette briefly one more time before leaving. She said she hoped I enjoyed my stay, and I said I did -- it was brief, but it was comfortable and she was perfectly friendly.

So that brings us to yesterday, finally, and starting with breakfast at a place called Little Cheerful Cafe. It might better have been called Delicious But Annoying Cafe: the food took ages to arrive, but was super tasty; also, neither Ivan nor I noticed the sign when we went in that said CASH OR CHECK ONLY. I hate it when restaurants do that. As Ivan said, "It's fucking 2019!" Neither of us had cash on us after we tried and failed to pay with plastic, and when the lady suggested we use the ATM they had right there, it would not spit out any cash for my card.

The lady suggested we go to the Bank of America ATM to get cash and come back, so that's what we did. I realized on our walk back that this part of the irritation was all my fault -- I had been trying to use my credit card as a debit card! Shit. I felt bad about that. I had already had to load an app to my phone just to pay for the street parking, which had taken several minutes and that would be part of the excuse for our distraction in our hurry to get inside once I was done with that, and then we had this to deal with.

But, whatever. Things improved markedly after that. I was really afraid Ivan would be too afraid to do anything else with me due to being too tired; I had asked him while we waited for more than half an hour for our food to arrive how work had been, and he said, "I was crying this morning." I was like, "Seriously?" and he assured me it had really happened, just from frustration with being overworked due to a Nurses Aide calling in sick twice a week for bullshit reasons -- and then the regular nurses have to pick up that slack, when they already have their own full-time jobs. He was clearly genuinely upset about it, and the state of his job, and spent a lot of the time at the table looking forlorn and sort of mumbling to himself in typical Ivan fashion.

But, when we got to the car, I asked if he was still up for checking out Chuckanuck Drive, which Auntie Rose had insisted was the most important part of Belliingham I be sure to see -- and he said yes. So, that's where we went, and we drove on it for several minutes, Ivan silently observing the coastline cliffs the road winds around.

When we passed Larrabee State Park, he commented on it, and said it's where people go to camp a lot. When I drove past it a ways, he said, "Where are you taking us, Matthew?" I said just down the road and I would turn around soon. He mentioned Larrabee Park again and I asked if he'd like to stop there. He said yes; apparently he had never been.

I took a calculated risk and parked without using any purchased Discover Pass. We were only there maybe half an hour or forty-five minutes anyway, and it was early in the morning; the ranger station wasn't even open. I parked in a small bit of space across the street from the main entrance. And it really seemed to be at least a temporary antedote to Ivan's current woes -- he seemed to really, really enjoy himself there. He didn't act exhausted at all.

In fact, the above photo of him was taken there, and a rare shot of a natural smile of his -- I got it while we were both laughing about something he'd just said. He's constantly asking me to re-take photos of him he wants to pose for, and when I said, "You're so hard to satisfy," he suddenly said, "Satisfy me, Matthew!" Uh... That kind of cracked us both up.

Ivan does this a lot when we're together anymore and we go anyplace photogenic: he'll stop and say, "Picture!" and pose, and ask for more shots until one I show him I've just taken is to his liking. He asked me to send him all the photos I took of him after I took him back home -- I sent him 38. I did not keep all of those; in the full Bellingham photo album on Flickr, I have kept 28 of the shots I had with him in them. So I guess I only deleted about 10 of them. That would largely be why this photo album is thus far the largest of this year's Birth Week photo albums -- totalling 80 shots. The biggest prior to that had been San Juan Island with 73 shots, but Shobhit is no longer the ham he once was, or that Ivan seems to have become now.

Anyway, we also stopped at Fairhaven Park on the way back, a place Ivan says he walks to from home to hike around nearly every day. We went on a very long walk in there, so he could take me to a place called Hoag's Pond, which is where is is in the photo at the end of this post. That also took a lot longer than expected, and was very nice even though my legs are still aching from all the walking, and then I finally drove him back home. By this time he really was starting to look genuinely tired again. He thanked me for coming to visit; I thanked him for visiting; we hugged goodbye and, after I messaged him all the photos of him, I was on his way.

I just had one more stop before leaving town, another park Ivan recommended called Whatcom Falls Park. I'm really glad I did, too; it was beautiful, and yielded 11 more photos for the visit. And then, finally, I got in the car and headed back to Seattle, barely getting back before rush hour snarled up traffic.

[posted 12:29 pm]