I am visiting Nana=Awesome

Boohoo, woe is me.  I don't have a job so the only thing I have to fill my time with is visiting my family and fantastic adventures.  Pity me.

This week, the pity party is in Spokane, where Nana and I are gearing up for the Christmas season, for her visit to Seattle and her pending move out of the house.  She is in really good spirits about a move (although having a Christmas tree up has that affect on most of us).  We've been talking about it a lot, what the possibilities are, what she hopes for, how it all might work. It's actually kind of exciting, although there is a lot of legwork remaining to be done.  But I keep trying to tell Nana I want her to move across the mountains for selfish reasons: because I want to hang out with her more.  I might escalate this argument to saying aggregation the family will have a more magnetic draw on great-grandbabies from TX, if you catch my drift.

And Nana has been working very consistently on paring down the house.  I am taking a suitcase full of stuff back to my house this weekend.  I mention this because I know my siblings/cousins feel a little squeamish about vulturing over Nana's stuff.  But people, this is Nana- she is utterly unattached to her "mortal possessions."  This means, Noel, that if she happens to mention a book, or a table cloth, or a set of  candlesticks that you might like, that is basically it's last stop before goodwill.  There isn't a phone tree in action over these things,  and most of the the things that she thinks of as "her things" (ie: not from her Mom, or sister or grandmother), she is very happy to part with.  You can all expect, after the holidays, a box with your Christmas ornaments, and possibly childhood portraits which she is ready to part with.  But otherwise, if you wanted to help her get stuff out of her house, I think she would be grateful.  She is getting rid of it in one way or another.  My luggage from this trip has some gardening books, a wooly blanket from Wales, and the "kid's toys" that Nana has had on hand for when kids come to her house (you may remember some of these children.  I was once one of them).

Nana and I went to see a fantastic performance of a Christmas Carol last night at the Civic Theatre, which prompted us to think about the season tickets we would buy together for a West side theatre.  And we made oodles of Candy, some of which will go with us to the Raku firing later today, which is a potluck event at this studio.  We are also going in for pedicures a little later, and Saturday we are headed to My House in Kirkland for continued adventuring.