What I did on my winter vacation, by breathedout, age 37

[breathedout]

Well! I haven't been around over the past few days for the good but honestly kind of exhausting reason that I've been visiting my parents, in my hometown. Being recently retired, my parents now have a RAGING social life, oh my god. I socialized more in the past five days than I had in the previous five months (excluding greywash, of course, who doesn't count as "people" for the purposes of requiring recharging after hanging out with her). A quick bulleted list of trip highlights, as I wait in the Portland airport for my flight to start boarding:

• Went clothes-shopping with my mom (who is great fun on this kind of excursion), with the goal of refreshing some of my work staples that are 10-15 years old. We had kind of bizarrely good luck with sales: a beautiful $80 blouse marked down to $20, three $75 shirts marked down to $7 each, I could go on. I ended up with two new pairs of pants, five new shirts, a stellar red Lunar New Year dress and a plaid pencil skirt for under $200.



• My parents have a nine-month-old puppy who is adorbsable and also a lot of work. One key element of their newly-amped-up social life is the "puppy happy hour" at which some other puppy owners in the area come over, the dogs run wild, and the people drink wine. So I met some nice people with some lovely dogs.



• One of the puppy owners plays in a folk/bluegrass band, so we went to see a gig of theirs at a local joint. Because Portland is a small town, it turned out that one of my former middle school teachers was also in attendance. Also the manager of Sock Dreams, at whom I fangirled a bit about their merchandise. Other highlights of this outing: the bartender put the puppy & kitten channel on the TVs instead of sports, and passed out free bacon at intermission. (Which I can't eat, but it was still very Portland.)



• I had lunch with a friend/former lover of mine who has been struggling over the past eight months or so with her second divorce. It seems like she's in a much better place now than she has been, and it was really nice to catch up. Also she took me to this new vegetarian Thai place on Division (not surprising it's new since literally everything on Division has been replaced since I moved away), where the pineapple fried rice was delicious.



• Tried two new-to-me styles of workout! In both cases I got the friends-and-family discount: the friend with whom I had lunch is a functional fitness/strength training instructor, so she put me on the list to try out one of her classes. It was... probably not really my "thing" in any pursuing-it-long-term sense, but it was fun to try out, and to see where she works and what she does with her days. Then one of my parents' friends, who has her black belt in Taekwondo and co-teaches a class with some other blackbelts, put me on the guest list for that class as well. Perhaps unsurprisingly, since I'm so into Ashtanga & other structured/“form”-based styles of yoga, this was much more my speed. I thought it was particularly cool that the structure of the class meant that so many different ages and levels of practitioners could practice together: there were probably forty people in the class, ranging from about 7 to about 70 years old, at all experience levels, and everyone was SO kind and welcoming to the newbie.



• My mom, who briefly owned a dressmaking business back in the 70s, has been getting back into sewing since her retirement & has been very generously been making me garments, including some fabulous lounging pyjamas that she finished while I was in town. She's working on a blouse for me right now, so we went looking for buttons. We eventually found some in a local yarn shop, where I also bought some buttons of my own, and also yarn for the Cypress vest by Brooklyn Tweed. (You can see the yarn I picked up here.)



• We had a dinner party with my godparents, my parents, and my parents' close friends and neighbors who bought the house across the street where my childhood best friend grew up. The dinner party was in my BFF's former house, and it was a really bizarre experience to be back in this house where I'd spent so much time throughout my elementary, middle, and high school years, but redecorated. The dinner was lovely, though.



• No trip to Portland is complete without a trip to Powell's, and I got to commune with the mothership. I hope to do a Reading Wednesday post later today, & I'll talk more about what I got & some other reflections in that post, but: it was lovely. Also, having just finished a watch-through of Leverage, it was fun to have lunch at the brewery where its last season was filmed. (Especially since said brewery is about to close in March. Sadface.)



• My parents are really into Schitt's Creek right now, which I hadn't seen, so we watched some episodes of it. Good Christopher Guest-y fun; Catherine O'Hara's face is always a highlight. I'm kind of surprised I haven't heard more about this show via Tumblr/DW/social media, since it features an explicitly-identified pansexual character (as in, the word "pansexual" is said, and then defined, onscreen) who is also a lovable trainwreck.



• Somewhere in there I managed to write a couple of thousand words of the Good Place bodyswap story (still in need of a title). I'm currently having that realization, relatable to many long-form writers, where I thought this story would top out at 10k and it's currently 9k and only about halfway done. OH WELL, it'll be what it'll be.

I'd better pack up & head over to my gate, but hopefully I can write more about the reading portion when I'm safely back home.

Comments

[teaforlupin]

I feel exhausted just reading about this incredible social whirl, how do your parents do it???

Love the tales of successful clothes shopping; always so nice to have such good luck just when you need it! And walking into yarn stores is always so dangerous... >.< I went into one the other day and miraculously only walked out with what I went in for (a ball of sock yarn), although as it turns out I should also have acquired a set of smaller dpns, so I will have to go back (oh noes!!) before I can start my first pair of knitted socks.

[breathedout]

I DON'T KNOW how they do it, isn't it nuts?! I am so relieved to be back home, although it was great fun to see them and see how their lives have changed since retirement. But yeah it was. A Lot.

And oh no that your sock plans have to be postponed. It's always frustrating when you want to cast on for something right away & can't do it. Here's hoping you find time to pick up the DPNs in the near future.

[sylvaine]

Heh, half my twitter feed has been yelling about Schitt's Creek! I wonder why it has passed other people by.

Your vacation sounds like so much fun but also so much socializing! I hope you have a few days to decompress. <3

[breathedout]

Oh interesting! I have never encountered a person being fannish about Schitt's Creek, I don't think! I'd heard of it but I didn't even really know the concept before I started watching it with my folks. So funny how different spheres of influence can totally miss certain things!

[pennypaperbrain]

I'm glad you had a good time! I had a vague idea you lived in a social whirl - lots of young ladies - anyway, but having to hang out with the friends of the glamorous retired is something else.

[breathedout]

LOL! That was at least somewhat more true when we lived in LA (weirdly, since it takes so long to drive anywhere). I can't tell if the dating scene here is actually that much less inspiring, or whether I'm just not in a place at the moment where I'm that interested. Since greywash & I bought the house that's a whole other HUGE project to add into the juggling mix; I have to keep up with yoga in order to manage my anxiety, and writing remains the most important thing; plus my day job is really demanding these days. Putting effort into dating just doesn't seem worth it right now. But on the other hand, I don't want to let all my social connections atrophy. Idk, it's a hard balance.

Not for my parents, though, they've got it down! Ahahaha.

[lobelia321]

*waves*

[breathedout]

Hello!

[anelith]

Wow your parents are having an amazing time in their retirement! I've been thinking a lot about how I want to age into retirement and after, after visiting both sets of parents over the winter holidays. The comparison between the two made me realize that I would rather be like my dad and his wife, who socialize and participate in the community, rather than my in-laws, who basically go to church and that's about it. Their social engagements are few and far between. I'll never be a social butterfly but I'm trying to make more of an effort, because I think it leads to a happier old age.

[breathedout]

My parents ARE having an amazing time in their retirement. More of an amazing time than I am really equipped for, tbh.

I think that's a really good idea to look forward and do some visioning about how you want your retirement to look. I know in my own life social engagements are the first thing to get back-burnered, to the point where I have to be very conscious of making the effort if I don't want them to disappear completely. Which I don't, because I think you're right that they really contribute to long-term mental health.

[lovepeaceohana]

That sounds like a lot?! like, definitely a lot of fun, but also a lot to pack into a vacation/winter break. It's so cool that you got to try so many new things, and catch up with people, and VISIT POWELLS OMG ISN'T IT THE BEST. I'm not there nearly often enough, and in fact the last couple times I've been in Portland, I haven't managed to make it over ;-;

[breathedout]

It was a LOT. Yes! So much! I feel so wiped now, and tomorrow I have to go back to work. ;-;

I think it was worth it, though, especially the Powell's trip. I just kind of wish I'd taken an extra vacation day to recover.

[violsva]

Sounds like the kind of week that's great as long as it doesn't happen too often!

It's weird what fandom does and doesn't pick up on. Last year I stumbled across Silk in the library and loved it, and then wondered why on earth Tumblr hadn't informed me about this very femslashable Korean-American Spider-Girl - I mean, that kind of thing was basically why I was on Tumblr! And I heard about a lot of other PoC in comics there, despite not being much into comics at the time, but no one mentioned Cindy Moon.

(Schitt's Creek, on the other hand, being a CBC show, I heard about from the posters all over the Toronto subway.)

[breathedout]

Ha, exACTLY. I'm good with the past five days as long as I don't have to repeat them for approximately a year.

And yes, it's so funny what the fandom claw seizes on. One often feels like social media is letting one down... but I suppose there has to be an initial point of entry to any given sub-network. (Also, Silk sounds great!)

[chestnut_pod]

My goodness, just reading about that makes me feel happily tired! It's the social equivalent of being beaten up the giant mountain by a bunch of elderly men in solid-color Jansport short-shorts while backpacking.

That said, well done to your parents! That's the kind of butterflying I aspire to when I (in a pipe dream) retire. Healthily social, involved in communities, trying new and old things…

[breathedout]

Ahahahaha, that is a perfect analogy! Especially since I have also had that experience in a literal sense, so I know whereof I compare. I woke up this morning & emailed my coworkers that I'm taking an extra vacation day; I need the time to recover.

But yes, it is great on my folks. They're obviously living their best lives & it's great that they have such a thriving social network. I definitely don't have to worry about them from afar!

[starshipfox]

That sounds like SO MUCH. I really like dogs, but I find it weird that they seem to come with a social whirl attached. When I try to go for gloomy, lonely walks with my neighbour's dog, people are always coming up to me with dog stories and social cheer. ANYWAY, I'm glad you had a good time overall :)

I had no idea the Brewery where Leverage was filmed was a real place, and now that I know, I'm sad that it's closing!

[breathedout]

I'm sad it's closing too! Especially now that I had an EXCELLENT crispy tofu bahn mi sandwich there whose recipe I had fun imagining Hardison & Eliot developing.

And yes, it was... a lot. I ended up taking an additional day off work just to recover from my vacation!