This past weekend, my parents traveled to Tacoma to welcome the birth of my second niece. When they had to cut their stay early due to a cold (What a bummer drag!), they were forced to drive down to Portland in lieu of going over Snoqualmie Pass (which was closed indefinitely, thanks to the weather).
Despite the fact that I knew their drive would be an extra 4 hours, I was jealous. Still am, actually.
Upon telling Jason he asked if they could grab us coffee, lemon poppyseed quickbread, charcuterie, a place to live and jobs as awesome as his current one.
Don't get me wrong; we are enjoying the heck out of our time here. We just miss the hell out of Portland. There's something comforting about the 45 degree weather, complete with it's gray skies and constant drizzle that feels like home. We miss the hippie kids sitting outside of New Seasons asking if we want to help "the, like, good cause of legalizing marijuaaaaaaaaaana maaaaaaan," the cheap movie theaters where we can buy tickets, two slices of pizza, candy and drinks for $18, and the entourage of tiny cars that made us feel like we belonged.
And of course, we miss our friends.
Luckily, on Saturday we found a little place that made us feel right at home.
Thanks to our friends the Beausejours, we finally went to this general store in OTR called Park + Vine. Sammy told me earlier last week that the store was having a killer baby stuff sale and that we should check it out, since many of their products are items we've put on our baby registry. Seriously, the store is awesome. After spending a solid two hours driving around to find a place to dump our recycling and buying apartment-repair goods at Home Depot, we walked into Park + Vine and felt...relieved. Comforted. Stoked beyond all belief.
The store is pretty awesome. There's a cafe that makes amazing-smelling vegan food. There's a marketplace that sells more kinds of kombucha than I've heard of (They even have Oregon Kombucha starter kits!!!). There's a home goods section that sells toilet seats for proper pooping (No I'm not kidding and yes this is awesome). And of course, there's the baby section.
This is the first time Jas and I have really BOUGHT stuff for baby and let me tell you, it was simultaneously fantastic and overwhelming. Perusing through the shelves of cloth diapers, I realized I have little-to-no idea what to do with one. Jas held up a package of what looked like rags to me, only to say, "Hey, these are what my mom put me and Bri in." He wanted to get them while I imagined being home alone with baby, trying to figure out how the heck to use them as I wipe baby poo off of the walls. Needless to say, we didn't get those. But we did walk out with some diapers (that I am VERY confident I'll know how to use), locally made bibs, diaper liners and a diaper pale liner. I could have easily purchased one of everything there but I'm figuring it's probably more important for Poppyseed to have a crib with a mattress than fifteen bibs, a onesie that says, "My dad has more tattoos than your dad," a dozen pairs of booties and six baby carriers.
Priorities.
Upon checking out, I think the dude must have witnessed our "WTF do we do with these diapers?" scene because he mentioned that the store puts on cloth diaper classes, in addition to a boat load of other natural and hippy-ish classes. I'm very excited to be adding many of them to our calendar.
Like I said, it's a piece of home away from home...just without the smell of dirty hippy.
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