I left Union in my rental Jeep Wrangler yesterday just after noon. It was a half-hour drive to the plant nursery place called The Brothers Greenhouses, which has a charming replica of a Hobbit House at the back of its fairly extensive nurseries. The nurseries alone, I think, Shobhit would be interested in looking through if and when he's ever nearby over there. If he ever comes with me to visit Claudia one day, maybe.
This nursery came up when I googled "hidden gems" in the Port Orchard area, for something to do with Claudia, specifically for the Hobbit House. I thought it looked very cool and decided I wanted to see it. I had texted Claudia that I'd love it if she met me there, but if she preferred I just swing by her house afterward that was also fine. She texted back,
Come on by when you want. I hope it's ok, but I'm protesting leaving my house today. Uh. Okay.
She later explained that she has a lot of friends in Seattle who rarely, if ever, come into Seattle to see her, and it feels very one-sided with all the time she has to spend going into Seattle to see them. I get that. Even without hearing that, I was totally okay with just swinging by the house. I was already on that side of the Puget Sound anyway. Also, as it happens, I've now seen Claudia twice in the past three weeks; once was in Seattle and once was in Port Orchard. She comes in to work at her employer's office at the Bullitt Center once a week, so we just coordinated one of the days she happened to be in town already, and I hardly affected her schedule much—we did miss the ferry she would have preferred, but then I just rode with her as she drove around via the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and then she dropped me off at the Port Orchard ferry terminal where I took the foot ferries back home. It was fine.
This time, I was returning from my visit with Jennifer in Union, so I figured it was a good time to go visit Claudia for a bit, and she could be part of my Birth Week, which I am only
occasionally able to manage.
So, I stopped at The Brothers Greenhouses first, and spent all of about twenty minutes there. I got about 15 pictures in that time, including the brief video clip, seven of those of the Hobbit House. I smartly walked to the far side of the nursery area first, so I would be making my way through the grounds back to the Jeep again—and as it happened, the Hobbit House was right there on the far end, right where I came in on that side.
It was all of a ten minute drive from The Brothers Greenhouses to Claudia's house, where she was found doing the yard work in her huge yard that she is constantly doing. I got there at about 1:00, and left at about 3:30, so I suppose I visited with Claudia for a good two and a half hours. It would have been great to have more time, but my sailing choices at that point, for a one-hour crossing from Bremerton to Seattle, were either 4:15 or 6:40. There are not as many ferry departures these days as there used to be, and 6:40 was just too long a wait. That wouldn't even have arrived at Seattle until 7:40. And I needed time to get started on Birth Week blog posts: I barely managed two posts yesterday, winding up awake well past midnight as a result; this very post is my second today. Hopefully I can stay abreast of my activities here more consistently for the rest of the week.
Anyway. I spent a lot of those two and a half hours sitting in a lawn chair Claudia provided as she worked on yard work. More than once, she tried to take a break and just visit with me, such as sitting in the charis with me shortly after I arrived, or hanging out inside with me for a bit when I started to get chilly. Soon enough in both cases, though, she really got a hankering to get back outside with her hands in the dirt.
We talked a bit about politics, and Shobhit's ongoing campaign for Seattle City Council. Speaking of which, he really had a breakthrough yesterday: after getting really down on himself for not getting any donations on Friday or Saturday, Sachin came over and assisted him to set up a table at Cal Anderson Park near the Capitol Hill Sunday Farmers Market yesterday. He got 12 donations! That was absolutely a record for one day, and if he keeps going back to do that every Sunday, at that rate he'll easily reach his goal of 150 donations from Seattle registered voters, half of those from District 3 (most of which would be if they're at the Capitol Hill Farmers Market), which he needs in order to use all the Democracy Vouchers that have been allocated to him. This was genuinely exciting news, which he texted me
just before I was headed out from Claudia's.
Claudia and I talked about a lot of other things. Changing rules among leftists, her fatigue with it as a middle-aged woman in overalls doing yard work in Kitsap County. She noted that Kitsap is a "purple county," and that it seemed to result in stuff actually getting done. She was also glad to hear that Shobhit was aiming to replace Kshama Sawant, the outgoing District 3 Seattle City Council person, who no reasonable person likes. Claudia, it turns out, has had direct experience with Sawant, having been on the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board. Claudia had nothing good to say about her interactions with her, which seems to be a pretty common theme. if Claudia were still a Seattle voter, she definitely would be giving Shobhit all the support he needed, I think.
Oh and now I'm getting back to politics. Claudia and I did also talk some fun, brainless stuff. At her instigation, we played a few rounds of "fuck / marry / kill." When she gave me the options of Pedro Pascal, Idris Elba, and Andrew Garfield, I had to admit that I had to kill Pedro Pascal because I didn't want to be racist. Claudia chuckled a bit and said, "I did think about that." I do think that when it comes to stuff like that, we might as well just be honest. That said, I also noted that I think Idris Elba is great marriage material regardless. I would choose to fuck Andrew Garfield, of course, under any and all circumstances. Well, unless he were competing with Colin Farrell, I suppose. (Claudia gagged at the idea of Colin Farrel being hot. Sacrilege!)
It was a great, if relatively brief, visit with Claudia, which did also include a couple of cocktails, spread over a sufficient span of time. I'm really glad we were able to make it happen. She complimented how I looked, and said I looked slim. I was like, "Well, black is slimming." I'm still not at the weight I want to be, but it should say something, I suppose, that she was the second person in two days to tell me, unsolicited, how good I looked. She likes to tell me I am a delight, and I tell her the feeling is mutual, because it is.
I made it to the Bremerton ferry terminal fifteen minutes later, and had a very pleasant one-hour crossing back to Seattle. I was one of only two people I could find on the whole boat wearing a mask.
[posted 7:43 pm]
