It’s like the dream I had one night in Niamey last year: I’m at Peet’s in the Pearl, and I’m wearing my cowboy boots and I’m walking to Powell’s. And then I wake up.
But it’s real. After two fabulous weeks with my sister, we came to Portland. Peter stood in line for four hours and bought us new iPhones. I got to hang out with David Cook for half an hour, it was like a party and then I went to the American Idol tour concert twice. I sat between Mom and Peter and David Cook poured a bottle of water on himself and sang; does it get any better than that?
Today in the Pearl district of Portland, I went from Imelda’s shoes to Rich’s cigar/magazine store, to Anthropoligie (ahhh) where I tried on clothes for six hours and bought the cutest pants in the world, and a vintage-looking apron. God, I love vanity sizing. Then I went to Powell’s looking for my own copy of that perfume book, but they didn’t have it, although they did have at Anthro, and why didn’t I just buy it there? But I did find another fabulous-looking book about some perfumer during the time of Louis XIV and I bought that, “now a major motion picture” it says on the cover. Then I went to Buffalo Exchange and looked at cowboy shirts with abalone shell snaps for Peter.
The one moment that actually brought tears to my eyes? The soup bar at Whole Foods.
After that, I went to Safeway and bought a bottle of Ravenswood Somoma County old-vine Zinfandel, then drove down 39th to SE Salmon Street, to our litttle blue house with all the windows and the birds chirping.
And Peter bought me a Martin guitar and then I went to the Woodstock branch library and checked out a song book and I’m learning to play ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and tomorrow Amuk is coming from Seattle and we are walking to Bread and Ink for dinner, and then on Saturday we drive to Mt. Shasta to see Mike and Tanya and Abe and Serge and Mrs. Issakov.
It’s the best dream ever. I love you, Portland, Oregon.
twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?" 
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