Hello & Good-bye

This upcoming week will be a week of hello and then good-bye. Jack and I will see the Boy Tuesday at Wilderness and then drop him off at boarding school on Friday. Just as I am saying hello, it will be time to turn around and say good-bye. I am happy to see him, but I am also preparing for heartbreak. My friend Eleanor said, "And you will cry on the whole flight all the way home." This is seriously messing me up.

Plus, Claire-Adele is in town and life has been busy. It has been wonderful to see her and spend time with her. Yesterday, Jack and I took her and her new boyfriend to Mount Rainier National Park where we climbed Mt. Skyscraper. (Whoever named it was not that creative. I digress.) I think we did a nine mile hike. Or maybe it was eleven? Anyway, it was a long, arduous hike with spectacular views.

Somewhere along the way in the past two days, I have become slightly manic, perhaps. Not full blown crazy manic, but kind of close. I am tightly wound and tense and things that I usually let slide are pissing me off. And when that happens, I have to wonder why I am getting pissed off: is the problem something that typically should piss me off and the real problem is that I am too mellow in my day-to-day, or, is my fuse to short and I am being unreasonable?

One of my friends at work says I always have nice things to say about people and places, and that I never say bad things. He, for example, will walk down Pike Street Market and bitch about the line of tourists at the first Starbucks.

"Why are all of these people here waiting in line? That is so stupid. Don't they know there is another Starbucks down the street that is way better?"

Everyone who works or lives downtown thinks the exact same thing, but rarely do we say it aloud. One day the Boy was downtown looking for coffee and he accidentally stumbled on the first Starbucks, unaware it was the first Starbucks. He thought it was a normal Starbucks and he could walk in and get coffee. He was mightily pissed when he had to wait in a long line for his latte. Even Claire-Adele, the biggest Starbucks fan on the planet, will go to a local coffee shop before hitting the first Starbucks.

I digress. Here are things that are unreasonably or unreasonably pissing me off, thereby proving that I am capable of being not a nice person, which really shouldn't be anyone's goal, but whatever:

• Self-checkouts at grocery stores. I was at QFC yesterday at 6:45 a.m. getting food for the Mt. Rainier hike and ZERO regular cash registers were open so I had to scan and bag my own groceries. Why? I suck at scanning and bagging my own groceries. I bought bananas and pluots and I had to look up the prices for fruit. The cashiers and baggers are ten times faster than me when it comes to checking out. 
• People who do not leave the porch light on when we are going out and then coming home in the dark. I hate having to find my keys and open the door in the dark. How hard it is to leave the porch light on? And it is only going to cost like two cents of electricity.
• People (namely, my family) who do not appreciate or understand that I woke up at the crack of dawn to gas the car, buy groceries, make sandwiches, and then drive them for a day of amazing hiking on Mt. Rainier. One person--who shall remain nameless--asked on the top of the mountain "Why isn't there lettuce on this sandwich?" Are you kidding me? Argh.

Mt. Skyscraper. This was way harder to climb than it looks from this picture. The trail is a "social trail" which means it is not maintained by the National Park, but the Park knows it is there and let's people climb it. The trail is super rocky, steep and slippery. A few days ago, someone saw a bear on the trail.