I suppose it will surprise no one that I have
a Flickr photo album collection dedicated to "overnights with Jennifer," which combines times I have gone to spend the night with her, and vice versa.
The only albums included that are not in either Seattle or Shelton (Shelton including, more recently, her and Matthew's new house in Union) are the very oldest one, when I went back to spend a weekend with her during her Sophomore year at WSU which had been during the year after I graduated, and thus my first year living in Seattle. She has visited me many times in Seattle since, as have I visited her many times in Shelton: 15 times to date, now, with me in Shelton; 11 times to date, now, with her in Seattle. (I had thought this was the 10th time she came, but I realized just yesterday that I forgot the time she had come while she was still pregnant with Ian, and was still with his dipshit dad David; I had also forgotten that that visit had been over New Year's when we rang in 2006. So, just yesterday I also added that photo album to the collection.)
It does appear that one thing has happened for the first time in 2022: she's come to stay the night with me twice within the same calendar year—she and Matthew came back in March, when we all went to see the Fortune Feimster show at The Moore Theater. Ivan was still living with us then, though, so that was also the first time she stayed in the Braeburn Condos "Guest Suite" which I rented out for them for the night; it thus was also the first time I finally
took a bunch of photos of that guest suite.
Anyway, before the pandemic, for a few years we had settled into a fairly regular annual pattern: I would go stay the night with her during my Birth Week; and she would come stay the night with me in Seattle sometime in the fall. For varying reasons, for a few years (2015 through 2019) I actually went to stay with
her twice in the same year, so combined with her one time coming to Seattle I would typically see her at least three times in a given year. This is the first time since the pandemic that that's happened again, it's just this time instead of me going to Shelton twice, she came to Seattle twice. And this is the first time it happened that way around.
And I totally could have just done it that way even now, but I figured it would be easier just to see if she wanted to come spend the night one weekend while Shobhit was in India. She was immediately on board, and so we made the plan for Saturday, October 15. The timing was slightly tricky because she and Matthew are both mail carriers in Mason County (that's where they met, when Jennifer was still married to Eric), and although Jennifer has Saturdays and Sundays off, Matthew works on Saturdays.
It's interesting to see how differently the dynamic is between Jennifer and whoever she happens to be with. When she was Eric, who owns his own business (he runs a Texaco gas station) and is generally very busy, he always went out of his way to just give Jennifer and me our own space and let us have some quality time just the two of us. That was always how Eric looked at it, and so when Jennifer and I had our weekend visits, he would chat with us but also largely leave us be when we were at their place; and he never accompanied her when she came to stay the night with me.
Matthew is a completely different story. And don't get me wrong, I'm fine with it—Matthew's a nice enough guy and, so far at least, he's never annoyed me in any way. He's pretty unassuming and as a general rule just seems to be along for the ride. That said, as long as Jennifer has been with him, the general rule seems to be that she never goes off on any side trips without him. I actually have no idea if this is more due to her preference or to his; it may very well be what they both want. The only point I'm making is that it's very different from when she was with Eric. To be fair, when she was with Sherman before Eric (and also before David, who was a very short lived marriage and relationship), Sherman was usually with her as well, so it's really Eric who was the anomaly here. (Also, when Jennifer was with Sherman, their kids were still little.)
So, this was not only the second time this year Jennifer came to stay the night, but also the second time Matthew came. The key difference this time was that Ivan has been out of the condo since May 1, so there was no need to rent the Guest Suite (or even put them on the hide-a-bed in the living room; in March I was more inclined to put them in the Guest Suite just because it would be more comfortable, both literally in an actual bed and because Ivan and Shobhit and me were already plenty of people in the condo). This past weekend they had the guest room to sleep in, which Jennifer's had a couple of times before when visiting in between roommate stints, at least ever since Ivan left this double bed in there after his second stay ended in February 2018.
So, how was the weekend with Jennifer and Matthew visiting? It was fine, perfectly pleasant. I got a little worried about how I really had no plans for us this time, except knowing we'd be drinking as we always do. Jennifer didn't care—"I'm easy," she said.
We were exchanging messages on Facebook Messenger Saturday morning while Matthew was still working, and she mentioned she'd like to try one of our rooftop bars. Shit, what a great idea! I wish she'd have mentioned that much earlier, because then I could have much more easily booked a reservation for the three of us—I actually tried to find reservations I could book Saturday night, but few places accept same-day reservations. So: note to self for their next visit!
That said, I did effectively still find a rooftop bar for us to go to, it was just for brunch yesterday instead of for dinner and drinks Saturday night: in my online searches, I got reminded of
Terra Plata, the place on Pike and Melrose (technically, where Melrose and Minor Avenues meet at a triangle point; the location is across the street from the Starbucks Reserve location that's more technically
at Pike & Melrose). I have walked past it several times in recent months, noticing the rooftop dining area, and have long wanted to try it.
It's only one floor up, but it's still on Capitol Hill and so has a view, of sorts,
of part of the Seattle skyline. The view would have been better without the tarp stretched over the top of us, presumably there because we usually expect rain in October—except that yesterday we had
a record high of 88°. It was so fucking hot! The normal high yesterday, mind you, would have been 60°; even the forecast 28° above normal (!) and even
breaking the daily record high by 16°.
The weather yesterday was truly nuts. I had actually finally put the two fans, which previously were kept out in both the living room and in our bedroom, away in the guest room closet just a few days before, theorizing that it was late enough in the year to not be hot enough for them again. As of now, that is likely actually true—the highs the rest of this week are set to be in the sixties—but I really could have used those fans yesterday. On fucking October 16! What is this, Arizona?
We walked the 0.7 miles from home to Terra Plata, just as on Saturday night we walked the 0.8 miles to La Cocina & Cantina on Broadway for dinner, very shortly after they finally got to the condo at 6 p.m. on the dot. I had moved Shobhit's car to street parking so I could let them into the garage and park the car in our spot, which they did not drive again until the left yesterday—finding street parking, especially on Broadway, is too much of a pain in the ass, and they aren't comfortable driving in the city anyway (they live in rural Mason County, after all: Union isn't even an official city, being a "census-designated place" with a population of 631—that's smaller than Wallace, Idaho where Christopher and Tristen live—and the biggest city (and apparently only incorporated city) in the county is Shelton, with a population barely more than 10,000. They do not spend a lot of time driving around a major city like Seattle—the biggest they get to with any regularity is Olympia (population 56,000; metro 298,000).
It should be noted that my neighborhood on its own, Capitol Hill, has a population exceeding 32,000. Just my neighborhood is three times the size of Shelton.
So, they were fine with the walking I had proposed. It occurred to me we could do some browsing in Broadway shops, looking for Halloween costume ideas (I still have no clue what I'm going to dress up as), so I decided on La Cocina Y Cantina for dinner just because it was on Broadway, and I knew they'd be good with Mexican food. Plus. La Cocina is, so far as I've been able to figure, the fourth-oldest still-operating restaurant on Capitol Hill. (Dick's Drive In: 1955; Deluxe Bar & Grill: 1963; Julia's on Broadway: 1979; La Cocina: 1989).
To my surprise, Matthew covered the whole check for dinner. This was something Eric used to do a lot but they don't do as a rule since Matthew has been in the picture. He suggested I pay the tip and I noted that I didn't have any cash on me; he said it was fine. Jennifer joked that I could pay for brunch, knowing full well that the bill there would be much higher—even with the margaritas we all had at La Cocina. Still, Jennifer covered herself and Matthew at brunch yesterday and since I asked for my own separate check, that time I said I would cover the tip for all of us, and thus I paid about $63. That was my total for both meals though, when I had estimated totaling about $85 in my budgeting so I still got the better deal in the end.
After dinner, we did browse Broadway a bit. I had a gift card for Crossroads Trading Co that Shobhit got when returning merchandise there once as they only return for store credit; Shobhit gave it to me with the suggestion that I look for something for Halloween there. Well, they had literally no Halloween anything there, so, so much for that idea. Other stores were closed that late on Saturday, but we did make it into Panache, which has a
ton of Halloween stuff. They have some great earrings there (including a pair of dangling steak knives; I must have them) but I still couldn't come up with an actual costume idea. What I really need to do is come up with an idea and then shop for what I need to achieve it, but so far I've come up blank. I'm having dinner with Tracy tonight and we shall do some more browsing—even though, annoyingly, a lot of stores are closed on Mondays.
We walked back home after that, and had quite a bit more to drink. I was trying to think of what I could make, and I opened my
Cocktails of the Movies book recently gifted to me by Alexia. I happened to open to the page for Long Island Iced Tea, and when I said I could maybe make that, Jennifer immediately perked up: "I want that!"
So, I made all three of us a slightly modified version of a Long Island Iced Tea (I didn't have lime juice at all but did have lemon juice; no regular cola but I used Zevia Cherry Cola), which turned out quite satisfactory for all of us. They did contain a lot of booze, and when Jennifer asked for another, and I offered one to Matthew and he accepted, I skipped a second one of those, because doubling that amount of liquor would likely have put me into a blackout and then given me a terrible hangover yesterday morning. I did have another cocktail, but just added some tequila that time to the last of the guava juice we still had in the refrigerator. And the alcohol content was much lower for me in that last, third cocktail of the evening (counting the aforementioned margaritas we all had at dinner). Later I drank two full glasses of water and took two Aleve before going to bed at around 1 a.m.; I didn't feel spectacular yesterday morning but it still made all the difference, because I didn't feel especially bad either and I likely would have otherwise.
We all had another cocktail at brunch yesterday morning, as seen in the photo below—it was a specialized version of a "mule" that each of us ordered and was tasty. I woke up yesterday at 7:33, thankfully having slept through a couple of texts Shobhit annoyingly sent me from India at 6:50 my time—a dick move, frankly; I don't care that he was evidently concerned about Guru being hungry. Guru will live waiting a little while longer. Shobhit acts like the cats getting fed at the exact minute of their average feeding time every day is of paramount importance—going so far as to text from India about it—and it really isn't.
We walked back to the condo after brunch yesterday, browsing a couple of shops at Melrose Market there first, and we also went to Porchlight Coffee because they wanted some coffee. (I got a hot chocolate to which I added chocolate liqueur and peanut butter whiskey when we got home.) We hung out for just a bit while they finished what ended up actually being not coffee, but chai from the coffee shop. And then they left for home in the early afternoon.
I felt pretty productive by the end of the day yesterday: I took the car to get a pumpkin from QFC (after trying and failing to find one at Safeway); I got the pumpkin carving supplies out of the storage room—now all set for a Virtual Pumpkin Carving Party with Gabriel, Lea and Many on Friday; and even after I finished watching the spectacular episode of
House of the Dragon that became available to watch on HBO Max at 6:00, I got my daily 32 pages of my library book read. I called Shobhit on Skype after that and we connected for maybe 25 minutes. It was morning there and he said he was getting bored so he was going to go out in the city. I told him to take some pictures and eventually he did, sending them to me while I was sleeping overnight.
Speaking of Shobhit, the whole plan with his mom visiting is almost certain ("90% sure," he says) to be canceled. Just having her come with him to appointments to get shares transferred into her name from his dad's name (his dad died in 1990) is taking a lot out of her, and he's thinking travel to the U.S. will be too exhausting for her. He said this likely means she will never visit the U.S. again, and I could hear clear disappointment in his voice about that. It is kind of sad, and I feel sorry for his disappointment. On top of that, he has a court date he needs to be back for on December 15, which means he'll go back to India in a month and a half, and likely be there for as long as it takes to get this shares transfer finished and taken care of, which likely will last through the holidays. That will mean spending Christmas without him this year, which bums me out. Shobhit couldn't give half a shit about Christmas and never has, but I still love to have him with me on the biggest holiday in America, my favorite time of year—its deep connection to Christianity, which neither of us are active participants in, notwithstanding. On the upside, I guess, I can go stay the night in Olympia Christmas Eve and not have to worry about Shobhit's resistance to the idea.
If it comes to this, I may still create a scenario where Shobhit and I exchange gifts over Skype or something. I still want to make him a part of the holiday in one way or another.
[posted 12:33 pm]
