News Trend Thanks, Tillamook|Actual

Hey, remember a couple months back, when the Tillamook people asked to use my 2014 tweet about taking their cheese to Vietnam in a marketing campaign?

Well, of course, I don't blame you if you don't. If you'd like to read all the details, go here.

But the gist of my story today is that when I told Tillamook yes, they promised to send me a thank-you gift.

I've been quite excited about that.

And today, when I was out and about, and my third-born texted me to say I'd received a package that commanded, "Refrigerate upon arrival," I knew my lucky ship had finally sailed into port.

So I rushed home, grabbed the box out of the fridge, and here's what happened next:

And then, later that afternoon, this happened:

Yum! Thanks, Tillamook.

* * * * *

What started as an off-the-cuff tweet back in 2014 led to an interesting offer, a dairy industry fact-finding mission, and in the end, a cheesy gift. Here's the full story:

My Tillamook Tweet

Checking Up On Tillamook

Thanks, Tillamook

News Trend Silver Threads|Actual

Trees along Chennault Beach Road decorated with tributes for the fallen,

created by my sweet teenage across-the-street neighbor.

We were wrapping up a scary movie Netflix binge when my second-born breathlessly rushed into the room.

"Something MAJOR is going down out there," she gasped, nodding her head toward the front yard.

Twenty steps beyond my home lies Chennault Beach Road, a silver thread of asphalt that comprises the main thoroughfare and sole route into and out of our neighborhood. Leading down the bluff to a small cluster of well-kept homes, even on a Friday evening after midnight, it's usually a quiet street.

But as we turned our attention away from the murderous zombies on the TV screen and followed my daughter's gaze, we immediately understood the horror in her eyes.

Police cars.

Fire trucks.

Emergency vehicles of all shapes and sizes were streaming into our little community, sirens blaring and lights ablaze.

At least twenty first-responders screamed past our front door; as five, then ten, then twenty minutes ticked by, we noticed that not one of them was coming out.

Regular traffic - strangely heavy for this time of night - began to rush through a nearby side street, clearly seeking an alternative route out of the Chennault Beach loop. Apparently, the main road was closed.

Trapped drivers pulled their cars to the curb along my yard and gathered on the street corner. From the open windows, we strained our ears in the hopes of making out their conversations, in the hopes of understanding what was going on.

My mind struggled to bring order to this jumble of riddles. I could imagine only one scenario that would explain the facts.

A live shooter.

Shaking off the chill of that ominous thought, I blamed my dire conclusion on the scary movies, and after another half hour of nothing happening outside, we all gave up and went to bed.

* * * * *

"Three people were killed at a house party down the street. One more was injured. They caught the shooter."

My husband greeted me the next morning with the answers to my questions, but the ones I least wanted to hear.

Flipping open my Facebook feed, this news was affirmed in spades. Friends across the world were tagging me to a crush of articles describing the horrors that had unfolded at this gathering of local college kids in my neighborhood, though there were few details to be found at that point.

As more facts came in, the scenario went from bad to worse.

The shooter was someone we knew. He worked for my second-born at Abercrombie & Fitch during most of 2015, and had earned her respect as a hard-worker and conscientious young man. She gave him a funny nickname and they shared pictures of cats on Instagram.

One of the victims was the best friend of a young family friend. Her name, we learned, was Anna and by all accounts, she was lovely. She had been dating the shooter and apparently broke up with him last week.

The rest of the morning was a blur of emotion and communication.

I burned through my phone battery in record time.

By noon, my soul craved some peace and fresh air.

So I turned, as I often do, to my garden to bring order and calm to my troubled mind.

How to make sense of these tragedies? Lord knows we've all had plenty of practice lately, working through the anguish of senseless shootings and terrorist attacks.

Yet how infinitely more painful the process becomes when the people involved are real, living human beings that walk the same paths, share the same streets, breathe the same air as me.

Three young lives cut short for no good reason.

Three devastated families who will mourn this horrible day forever.

Three bullets shot from a killing machine that deserves no place in civilized society.

I have no words to wrap around the injustice, the shock, the outrageous crime of their deaths.

And I pray for these three victims, for the peace of their eternal souls, for their families, for all of us who bear the scars of this brutal tragedy and all the other tragedies like it.

* * * * *

But then, what about the shooter?

Is he to be hated, despised, cast off as pure evil?

Is he as demonic and inhuman and other-worldly as the monsters I watched in my movie?

No. I can't accept that. Until Friday night, he was known to be a smart, friendly, loyal and hard-working young man with a successful life and a bright future.

How did he fall so far?

I can't explain. But I know this.

The shooter committed an act of evil.

But he is not evil.

He is a human being.

And human beings have been killing one another since the dawn of time.

Each human being on this planet is capable of great violence.

Our souls hang by silver threads, beautiful and pure, yet undeniably vulnerable and infinitely fragile.

And while I pray that your humanity and mine will never be tested by a temptation to murder, I also pray that we find compassion and forgiveness in our hearts for those whose silver threads give way.

* * * * *

To read more about this tragedy and the healing in its aftermath, try:

Dear Mrs. Ivanov

Flowers, Candles, Ribbon

News Trend Sex In The Side Yard|Actual

Well.

I never came through on that promise.

And yesterday, as I pulling weeds in the vicinity of said mystery project, I suddenly realized my oversight. So as soon as the area was tidied up, I ran for my camera and captured the long-awaited shots.

Now I'm finally ready to tell my story.

* * * * *

The best ideas are when you take two older ideas that have nothing to do with each other, make them have sex with each other, and then build a business around the bastard, ugly child that results.

-James Altucher, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre Entrepenuers

* * * * *

Part One:

I grew up in Michigan's lake country where long ago, glaciers carved a series of long grooves in the earth that eventually filled with water and became a maze of lakes and rivers. All year round, ever since I was tiny, our lives were oriented to the lake - sledding and skating in the winter, boating and swimming every summer.

Since I was old enough to walk, every summer I spent countless hours padding up and down the quintessential dock - unfinished boards bleached silver grey in the sun, running horizontally beneath my little pink toes. I miss a lot of things about those precious days around the lake, but the simple pleasure of walking up a down a wooden dock is high on the list.

Part Two:

My side yard is a tiny slip of a thing, just wide enough for a narrow path along the west side of the house. I've tried quite a few different plantings and walkways over the years but always my efforts have devolved into an overgrown, jungly, impassable mess.

Another problem with this sassy side yard of mine is that, for lack of a better place, it has become a dumping ground for the hundreds of rocks that my husband and I have dug out of our garden beds over the years. For years now, we've been piling them along the sloping bit of the side yard, where the bit of level ground slopes down to the bottom of the fence, and while the rocks don't absolutely need to live there, it would take considerable effort to lift them all out and carry them away to somewhere else, wherever that might be.

And let's not even talk about how many spiders and slugs I would encounter living among those rocks. Just ew.

Part Three:

The summer of 2016 was a glorious high point in our pallet-collecting days. A few years before, as was the demam isu, we'd used an intact pallet to make a coffee table. But since then, we'd come across the winning strategy of simply disassembling the pallets and using the wood as lumber. My husband had stored up a generous supply of pallet lumber, nails and staples removed, ready and waiting for me to dream up a project.

* * * * *

And somewhere in my brain, during the magical first week of August, all three of these ideas that had been circling around in my brain, came together in a mighty crash and BOOM! Out of nowhere, the solution was crystal clear.

Come. Let me show you.

^ Let's start here, in the far corner of my front yard. Follow the stepping stones under the trellis. Nine times out of ten, I bonk my head on those wind chimes so don't feel bad if you do too.

^ Up the little rise and then back down. I've left the gate open so you can get a glimpse of what lies beyond.

^ There it is - my new pallet walkway. My collection of pallet lumber, sanded and sealed against the weather, just the width of my narrow path, and looking just enough like a Michigan dock to make me feel quite at home.

^ The path ends here as my side yard turns the corner into my back yard, and the pallet boards give way to stepping stones. My bare feet love the feel of the different surfaces.

^ Okay, let's turn around and go back. This angle offers a better view of my rock collection which runs the entire length of the walkway. Half of them are hidden by those plants on the left:Japanese anemone. I'm not kidding when I tell you that every spring I rip them all out with my bare hands and by midsummer, they have sprung back up again. My original vision was to keep that low, clean line of rocks unbroken by any vegetation, but I admire a plant with such determination so I have struck an uneasy truce.

^ Here we are, back in the front yard again. Thank you for joining me on my much belated kecil-tour, and I hope I brought back happy memories of doing cannonballs off a wet, weathered dock in the hazy heat of a Midwest summer afternoon.

* * * * *

And in case you're wondering, this project used up most of our pallet lumber supply. But since then, we've brought home more pallets and are in the midst of some new projects.

Stay tuned for more details. And this time, I won't wait three years

* * * * *

For more of my pallet projects, check out these stories:

Pallet Possibilities

Late-Night Pallet Party

Sex In the Side Yard

* * * * *

More stories about the random ideas that fuse themselves together in my head:

Sex In The Kitchen

Sex In The Workshop

Sex In The Garden

Sex In the Front Hall

Sex On The Patio

Sex With The Bookcase

Sex In the Side Yard

News Trend An All-American Dinner|Actual

So my friend, Aqil, was coming for dinner and about a week ahead of time, I asked him for his input on the hidangan.

"Hmm, this might be weird," he prefaced, "but what's the most American dinner you can think of?"

Well.

That was a good question. A very good question.

My mind instantly began to whirl

Cheeseburgers.

Meatloaf.

Pot roast.

Pizza.

Macaroni and cheese.

Hot dogs.

Spaghetti.

Fried chicken.

The more I thought, the more I waffled and weaved among the many possibilities. So I asked Aqil for more time to think, laid down my phone, and began polling my family. More and more ideas flooded into my brain and onto my list; I wasn't getting any closer to a decision.

Two days before the dinner, I was driving my fourth-born to work. I knew her mind was already transitioning into work mode, but with just a few moments left in our trip, I posed the question to her.

Without missing a beat, she replied with conviction and certainty.

Steak and potatoes.

Well.

That was a good answer. A very good answer.

And so, in celebration of Aqil's college graduation and bon voyage as he sets off on a well-earned summer break at home in Malaysia, I cooked him the most American dinner I could think of.

^ A fruit and cheese board featuring Ranier and Bing sweet cherries, Wheat Thins, two Tillamook cheeses, and summer sausage.

^ Grilled tri tip and mashed potatoes in our family favorite peppery au poivre sauce, roasted green beans and asparagus.

^ Strawberry shortcake on fresh flaky biscuits from my mother-in-law's best recipe with Tillamook vanilla bean ice cream.

* * * * *

We all ate until we could eat no more, and then sent Aqil off to Kuala Lumpur with a bag full of leftovers and a promise that we will treat him to another all-American dinner when he comes back to school in the fall.

* * * * *

For another story about my mother-in-law's amazing flaky biscuits, go here .

* * * * *

More stories about my friend, Aqil:

An Invitation To Dinner

Aqil's Chicken

Chicken Drumsticks

Ready To Launch

An All-American Dinner

Moondawg For The Win

News Trend Digging|Actual

"The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there."

- George Bernard Shaw

^ When my heart is heavy or my mind is full, I turn to my garden.

^ Not to stroll daintily among the roses, though I do make time to smell them.

^ Nor to idly pluck petals from a daisy as a means of making choices.

^ What I do is much messier than that.

I dig

big holes.

I shovel heaps of soil into my wheelbarrow

And I move them about, dumping piles here and there.

I pick out the rocks

I pluck out the weeds.

And with my trusty hose, I shoot streams of water to level out the terrain, creating swamps and mud holes in my wake.

Then I smooth over the rumpled surfaces with a deep layer of fresh mulch.

^ And usually, by the time I'm done digging for the day

dirty tools rinsed and put away,

weeds swept off to the composting bin,

my muddy feet scrubbed clean,

I'm feeling much, much better.

News Trend Late-Night Pallet Party|Actual

I was out in the driveway tonight, long after dark, varnishing lumber for my latest pallet project.

My husband stood by and took photos of the action, but declined my invitation to join in.

Huh. Go figure.

And while you may not be impressed with this in-process vision of loveliness, just wait till you see the final effect.

I think we'll both agree that my late-night pallet-painting party was well worth the effort.

* * * * *

For more of my pallet projects, check out these stories:

Pallet Possibilities

Late-Night Pallet Party

Sex In the Side Yard

News Trend I Will Bake You A Pie|Actual

Jurie's profile pic on the day I met him: August 4, 2008.

Today is a red-letter day on my calendar for two important reasons:

1. Exactly eight years ago, I met my first and best Malaysian friend, Jurie.

Dua. Just before midnight tonight, I am leaving on a trip to Cuba.

Now let me be perfectly clear. These are not independent events.

They are cause and effect.

Jurie's aunt currently lives in Havana, Cuba, and I am going to visit her family there.

I could never have guessed - all those years ago when a random Mob Wars player read my status that said, "I will bake you a pie," popped open a chat window, and took me up on my offer - how my life would be changed:

I discovered a new best friend.

I made friends with literally hundreds of Malaysians.

I came to know the ins and outs of their daily lives.

I learned about their government, their history, their culture, their religion.

I visited them and stayed with them in their homes.

I folded their laundry, played with their babies, swept their kitchen floors.

I explored their beautiful country.

Then, through a lovely coincidence, Jurie's cousin decided to attend university here in Seattle.

I spent time with him and we've become friends too.

I got acquainted with his mother, Nor Abdullah, who invited me to visit her in Havana.

And now I am about to hop on the plane.

Honestly, I can't believe this is happening to me. I never even thought to dream of making friends with Malaysians and traveling to Cuba. It's almost too fantastic to believe.

But this is what comes of offering to bake someone a pie. And I'm certainly glad I did.

My friend, Nor Abudullah, awaits me in Cuba. See you soon!

* * * * *

To read the full story of how I met my Malaysians, read this:

My Love Letter To The Kelantanese

To learn more about my first and best Malaysian friend, go here:

My Friend, Jurie

To hear about one of my dinners with a Malay college student, try:

An Invitation To Dinner

And to check out all the details of my visits to Malaysia, check out:

Me In Malaysia

Coming soon: My adventures in Cuba!

* * * * *

Check out these stories about my once-in-a-lifetime trip to Cuba and my wonderful friends who lived there:

I Will Bake You A Pie

Cuban Makan

Cuban Economics

El Malecon Cloudburst

A La Playa

Creepy Cuban Kudzu

Plaza De La Revolucion

Old Havana

Poolside in Havana

A Cuban Sunset Story

Sunset Chasers, Cuban Edition

The Puppy At The Castle

Old Havana On The Eve Of Fidel's Birthday

An ASEAN Celebration

Nayli's Bedroom

Varadero, Cuba

Winding Down

Dear Cuba

Aqil's Chicken

The Gentle Art Of Reframing

My Cuban Home

Tickled Pink

Full Circle

Chicken Drumsticks