Dear Universe, Could you lay the heck off me for a couple of weeks? I'm not sure how much more frustration and stress I can take. xoxo Bon

Then I gathered myself together, took some time, scooped the cats' litter boxes and went to bed. When I woke up this morning and checked in on my stream, I had received the following @reply from the user: The_UN1VERSE:

I'll See What I Can Do. But You're Doing Fine So Far.

This may sound dumb, but it was really actually helpful. Just that little piece of random encouragement set me up for a great and productive day. I have no idea if it's a real person or a bot behind the account. If it's a real person, they dealt me a huge measure of kindness with this one silly post, and for that I thank them. I'll try to pay that kindness forward.

I learned how to play cribbage when I was fairly young. My parents were friends with a couple who had two boys about my age; they would bring the boys over, we'd have dinner and then the grownups would drink beer and play cribbage while the kids watched a movie or played together. The real treat during these cribbage nights was that sometimes we were allowed to sit with the grownups and help count points. For those not familiar with the game, you get points for combining the cards in your hand or crib in different ways. It's a great learning tool for kids--counting, addition, pattern recognition--all wrapped up in the fun of a game.

In college I spent many hours with one young man, forging a friendship initially based on little more than a shared love of the game. The board pictured above was a gift from him to me and it's one of my prized possessions. I've taught my husband how to play now. Tonight, reminding him of the somewhat complex rules I was filled with happy memories. It's easy to let the good things take a backseat to daily stress and frustrations and after a month particularly full of them, I'm working hard to embrace the little joys. And maybe I'll be playing a lot more cribbage than normal.

Cat grass. the BobCat likes to eat plants, so I planted some just for him, that are safe for him to eat.

I've been doing a bit of navel gazing. About growing and changing and how that impacts friendships but also how that impacts how I understand myself. Earlier tonight I sent a text message to someone who was once very close to me; a friend that I had not had any contact with in at least a year, and had not had a real conversation with in double that amount of time. I recently found out that he had become a father and was devastated--not by the birth of his son--but by the fact that our once tightly knit friendship had deteriorated so far. He responded to the text message with one of his own, and then a phone call. The call was somewhat awkward; he only had a short break in his schedule to chat and neither of us seemed to really know where to start to fill in the missing information. Eventually we were laughing over an event that happened nearly eight years ago, one that involved an epic case of stubborn on my part. As we laughed about it, I assured him that my stubborn streak is still alive and kicking and he laughed and told me he couldn't imagine me any other way. Eventually we both made promises that we'd continue to try to reconnect and hung up the phone.

Our conversation got me to thinking about the struggle I've gone through in the past few years to understand myself as the person I am now. One morning I seemed to awake and find myself happily married but unhappy with my graduate program of study, and generally unable to get out of my own way because of anxiety and depression. I had no idea how to interact with the person I was, the person whose goals had changed from "career driven workaholic person with a PLAN" to "happily married and mostly domestic with no idea what I want to spend my life doing." I thought that my major struggle was because I had fundamentally changed as a person but I realized tonight that that was not the case. Instead, my struggle was with accepting the person I've always been. I'm not as stubborn as I used to be, I try to think more carefully and speak less hastily (although I still have an awful lot to say) but it's taken me a long time to realize that this Bon, the one I am today, has always been there. She was just overshadowed by the Bon I thought I needed to be. It's nice not to feel trapped by a box of my own making anymore, there's a lot more room for me to grow.

Just a few things of note that went on this year:

January After three and a half weeks of cleaning, painting and packing we moved from our crappy apartment across town to a sweet duplex with a washer/dryer in the garage and both a front and back yard.
February We settled in to the new home, and found great joy in having a dining room table.
March We adopted a second cat, a big black former-tom cat that we named Ollie, since then he's made it clear his name is really Bob.
April Celebrated my husband's 30th birthday, and our good friends Matt and T welcomed baby Arthur to the world. Saw Joel McHale do stand-up in Portland and finally visited the Japanese garden there.
May Planted my first "on my own" garden with the knowledge learned from family gardens growing up. Learned quickly how much faster things grow in this warmer climate.
June Celebrated my 28th birthday, started to harvest delicious foods from the garden.
July Made it through the wicked heat wave, thanks, in large part, to a window a/c unit that we installed in 105º heat.
August Won a blue ribbon for my Desdemona shawl at the Lane County Fair.
September Got a diagnosis for my husband's sleep apnea. Attended the beautiful wedding of Jodie and Anthony and watched their cat while they were on a mini-honeymoon. Our second great-nephew arrived in the world. Came down with crud and spent the latter 2/3 suffering from a raging case of bronchitis.
October Got a CPAP for my husband and as such, got my husband back. Took a trip home to the east coast where I spent not enough time with my New England family. Headed south to Massachusetts and then west to Rhinebeck where I was able to finally put real faces and voices to many wonderful women I know online. Was graciously hosted by Lisa, whose presence in my life is a daily source of joy. Returned home, came down with Rhinebeck crud. Drove south with my husband to San Francisco to see Kevin Smith and spend the weekend visiting with our friend Bonnie.
November Mourned the passing of a friend and of a family member but remain thankful for the memories we have of them.
December Full of joy. Celebrated Christmas in our home with my husband's mother and stepfather. Did mass amounts of knitting, baking, wrapping, and cleaning.

Not all of 2009 was joyous for us, but we are lucky in that the good generally has outweighed the bad. We have big plans for 2010 to be even happier, full of projects and friends and family and love. I wish the same for everyone else out there. Let a new decade begin!

On the left is the Old. The Waldo-Hancock Bridge, built between 1929-1931. It was one of the first two bridges in the US to use Robinson and Steinman's prestressed twisted wire stand cables and the first bridge to use Vierendeel trusses in its towers (a later example of a bridge that used this design element is the Golden Gate in San Francisco). For most of my growing-up life, there was an osprey's nest on the top of the tower on the Verona side of the bridge (seen here). In recent years the bridge was deemed unsafe for the weight of modern traffic. They added to the structure to shore it up temporarily, but ultimately it was decided to push forward to build a new bridge, next to the old one.

That New bridge is the Penobscot Narrows Bridge and Observatory, on the right. It's a very interesting piece of engineering, with its cables down the center of the bridge deck, so that the traffic actually drives on lanes cantilevered out over the river below. There is an elevator that takes you up in the tower on the Waldo County side of the bridge where you can look out and see the mountains in the area as well as a beautiful view along the Penobscot River. It is a great vantage point for photos, and it makes for lovely, interesting photos itself:

Now, I like bridges. I like old bridges, I like new bridges, I am fascinated by the engineering work that makes them support (or not) the traffic that goes over them. But, I am highly sadden to see the old bridge go. The state in which it exists now is a much dilapidated shadow of the proud, green bridge we drove over to visit my grandfather, to get to Ellsworth to meet the bus that would take me back and forth to school my final two years of high school, to get to Blue Hill for soccer games or the Blue Hill Fair. And the preservationist and Lover of Old Things in me is devastated at the impending loss of this pioneering example of bridge engineering. I have not yet seen any kind of a plan for the old bridge, although I did search the internet to see if there were plans for a pedestrian bridge, or greenway, or the other kinds of things that old bridges tend to become. Once the paint is gone from a metal surface, the rate at which it corrodes snowballs, and the point where it becomes un-salvageable can happen in not much more than a blink of the eye.

One of the many great things about living in the Willamette Valley is that it's the heart of wine making in Oregon. There are many fabulous wineries all up and down the valley, with several located just a short drive outside of Eugene. Last Friday I joined my husband and his company on a little tour of two of the wineries, Sweet Cheeks Winery and Silvan Ridge Winery for an afternoon of revelry and wine tasting.

We've had wines from both wineries before, and I'd originally chosen Sweet Cheeks' wines because of their amazing labels. I am constantly analyzing the world around me for examples of good design and there's just something I love about the Sweet Cheeks' packaging. Their logo can be seen here, on the side of their building:

The winery is located in Crow so the logo just seems so perfectly suited to the business. And to making really lovely labels, because let's face it, if you're not a wine enthusiast the label might be what makes you choose one wine over another.

Silvan Ridge was also lovely, although their logo is a bit less noteworthy. Their wines, on the other hand, are quite delicious. We had tried their Early Muscat--a sweet, semi-sparkling wine--before and loved it, enough that we brought a bottle home with us. We also both enjoyed their Pinot Gris. And this trip also solidified in my mind that I just don't care for red wines. I like their deep, rich color and they smell good to me but in the end? I just don't enjoy the way they taste. Maybe I just haven't found the right one yet.

And what trip with a big group of people is complete without some goofing around? At both wineries we played a mini tournament of Rock, Paper, Scissors with the winner taking home a bottle of wine of their choice. Get 20 people in a room and I can promise you that everyone will have a slightly different way to play that game too. We also took a few jumpity photos, like this one here:

All in all, I think everyone had a great deal of fun and we're definitely planning to visit some of the other local wineries around here before too much time passes.

It seems like the more I try to slow things down and enjoy them, the faster time flies. In the past month I've been to a wedding shower, a wedding rehearsal and a wedding (yay! Jodie and Anthony). Then I got bronchitis and a hefty hit of fall allergies followed by a big overhaul of the front yard (in progress still) and then a trip to Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival (more on that later, if I can squeeze it in). We also emptied the storage unit we were renting, and I've been harvesting the tail end of my summer garden, making ketchup and canning tomato sauce and drying tomatoes. We got a composter. I've knit two shawls and half of a fair isle hat. And now? Now I'm making lists preparing for a whirlwind two-week solo-trip home. I'm leaving my husband here in Oregon for this one, and I'll pack my first week with family and my second week with east coast fiber folks (particularly Miss Sunshinewalks) and Rhinebeck! I'm hoping for a slow-down to happen in November, but I'm not holding my breath.

Alaskan Racing Pigs (these are babies in training):

Stubborn as a Goat (or a little girl in a tutu):

Fancy Lady in a Bonnet:

The goats are from the Goat Gala, or the dressed up goat parade. My family raised dairy goats when I was a child so I have a soft spot in my heart for the horizontal-pupiled creatures.