wrapping it up in queen city

hiking at carkeek park

today is our last day in queen city.  what a glorious place.  i forget how beautiful it is in between visits.  we started off our last day at golden beetle for brunch with dear friends alice and jim.  ate spiced donuts with cardomom sauce, eggs mornay with a watercress salad, fava bean falafal with cucumbers and lemon, potatoes fried in beef fat, a greek yogurt fruit salad, a spring onion/asparagus scramble, a burger topped with an egg, and a house-made charmoula soda.

pike place market.  all together!  eva's holding cheddar cheese ice cream from molly moon.

 we took the kids to church, and i dropped ingrid on capital hill to visit a friend from her study abroad year in germany.

honk fest.  kite hill.  i thnk that's leslie dalaba.

 after church, we passed cafe racer and the sidewalk was completely covered in flowers.  christian and greg are attending a memorial there right now.

a small slice of the view you can see from kite hill at gasworks park.

marni cooked a delicious sunday dinner of eggplant stuffed with spicy tomato sauce and goat cheese.  i'm making that when we get home.

tights abounded at honk fest west.

don't know what this band was called, but they were all about cave-style.

 we walked to matthew's beach and saw lots of mother and baby duck groupings.  lots of spring flowers and puddles.  the sunlight was dappled, but it was a bit chilly.

christian's annual pole climb.

 i did laundry and started to get a sick feeling due to all the packing and driving ahead of me.  marni took the girls to the lake for a ladies swimming party/spring rite.  it's freezing!  i stayed behind with moses to finish laundry/pack/chill. 

shoe poetry in ballard.  we thought it was wordsworth.

a rad bike from dutch bike.

 marni and greg, mimi and thomas, as always, are such kind, fun hosts.

oyster bar with m & g.  g:  "are you gonna blog this?"

 & our kids were lucky to spend their early years with their cousins, raised litter style.

first plate of oysters.  my fave, the olympia, is next to the lemon. next to the mignonette is a little dish of grated horseradish root to mix in with the sauce before spooning it on to the oysters.

prawn crudo with roe.  the shells were fried and deliciously edible--like a prawn potato chip, if you will.

m & g's car was towed.  waiting for ride/posing for our next album cover. m & g=not amused, obviously.  stupid cops taking payola from towing company

love bomb go go from portland.  all band members had silver spray-painted boots.

happy 23rd anniversary picture.

this has been a spring of bookends--a week in nyc where i was living when i was eva's age, pregnant with her, then a week here in rain city, performing again where i first performed and first began to unravel something i'm still unraveling about why i'm here, what i'm doing, etc.  and then having all the kids together again for the first time in years is strange--adults and little dudes, both.  i guess it seems like certain phases are ending.  it feels good as long as i don't let it get poignant.

if that makes sense.

tomorrow portends the beginning of something new.

a blue sky in cloud city

we were married 23 years ago today. been making music together for even longer than that.

today was one of the most perfect days ever.

i woke up and made a stop at what i think is the best coffee house in wedgewood with marni, the van gogh coffee house (reviews and comparisons to come), then we headed to green lake for a walk around the perimeter where we saw a mother duck with ducklings, a large heron, and people doing various crazy looking gaits, warm-ups, etc.  and fishing on the dock.  christian met us when we were a little more than half way around the lake and walked with us.

then we came home and tidied up, ate breakfast, and took the kids to the lake city value village, our favorite family shopping/thrifting spot.  and we had a 30% off coupon.  so score.  eva got an amazing red dress, lula a beautiful red coat, cecily pink jeans, moses a ninja jacket & striped sweater, and christian a blazer.  i got a horrible nike hoodie, but it was so warm and comfortable and wicking that i caved on my no clothing with logos policy and bought it.  ingrid was off hiking, and i couldn't find anything that was right for her.  we missed her.

next came the honk fest at gasworks park.  this is SERIOUSLY one of my favorite parks in the world.  when you're on top of kite hill, you have a 360 degree view of seattle, especially on a day like today, blue with high white clouds.  there were three "venues" in the park and a couple of food trucks.  some crazy sh** was going down.  pictures coming.  greg played these seussian horns with an avant brass band created by a sculptor right at the top of kite hill.  we also saw love bomb go go from portland & christian climbed to the top of the poles on the playground, as is his yearly tradition. this is the kind of day that sheds light on one of seattle's nicknames,  "emerald city". when you stand atop the highest point of gasworks park, kite hill, you see so many glints and facets:  water, tall glass buildings, and green green green in all its myriad shades.  the gem-like qualities of the city are in full view.  not to mention the rather stunning gasworks themselves, sail boats, houseboats, canoes, the space needle, bridges, and the surrounding mountains.

after gasworks, eva took the children home while christian, marni, greg and i went to ballard to eat at the walrus and the carpenter oyster bar.  we put our name in at 4.30 and they had a table for us at 5.10.  in the intervening minutes, we watched a bike race on the cordoned off block near the restaurant and got annoyed at lycra.  (no reservations at walrus and carpenter).  the chef is a james beard chef-of-the-year nominee and the restaurant was named "top ten new restaurants" in the u.s. in 2011.  my foodie friends recommended it.  we had some fantastic oysters, and my favorite little plate was spring radishes with butter.  house-made cornichons were delish, roasted salted dates for dessert and salted sipping caramel with cracked black pepper.  there's more.  prawn crudo with roe, a cabbage and sun choke salad, a cheese plate with walnuts and celery, a citrusy mocktail, olives and housemade bread and butter.  oh, yeah, and fried oysters with cilantro aioli.  oh yeah, a maple bread pudding.  so a lot of good flavors and fresh tastes. 

i fell in love with the tiny olympia oyster.  it's about the size of a quarter, and it takes five years to grow to that diameter.  it's really flavorful for such a small little guy and tastes like the puget sound.  i know it's cliché, but i had a proustian moment where an entire decade flooded over me when i ate that perfect little oyster.

did i mention that today is my 23RD WEDDING ANNIVERSARY?  yep.  it's crazy. 

THEN we went back to our car, but no car was to be found.  ours and 3 other cars had been towed for parking too close to a driveway that was not obviously a drive way or marked as a non-parking spot in any other way.  so that was the one mar on a beautiful day.  eva picked us up and took us way up to 122nd and aurora to pick up the towed car.

christian and greg headed off so greg could play with seuss brass band again at a club somewhere.  girls peeled off for some girl t.v., some chocolate, and some hanging out time.

what a great day.

a more romantic couples anniversary will come when we return to utah, and a tribute to the amazing and absolutely unique person i've spent the last quarter of a centurey with, but  for now, today was just a perfect seattle day.