Taking risks to try new adventures

Farewell to Wisteria Cottage. Hello, next adventure!

I wrote this post on my last night in Wisteria Cottage, a cozy 540-square-foot artist's studio my cat, Anakin Skywalker, and I have called home for the past three months.

Wisteria Cottage and the surrounding property are being sold, and Ani and I must move again to our fifth home in less than two years. Living so simply has allowed me to breathe deeply for the first time in a long while. This past summer was one of the best of my adult life.

I've enjoyed special time with my daughter Katie, who lives next door in what I call the "Big House." We've picked sun-ripened berries, hung out and talked and made meals together that we've shared over Netflix movies.

My pared-down life at Wisteria Cottage taught me that I'm built of strong stuff, likely passed through the genes by my Swedish grandma, Lydia Blomgren Smith, who raised 11 children in a remote log cabin with no running water or electricity. Although my Wisteria Cottage summer pales in comparison to Grandma's challenges, I proved to myself that I could live three months without immediate access to a bathroom, kitchen or running water. It's given me the courage to take risks and be open to trying new adventures.

I sang karaoke with fellow reporters 20 or more years younger than me.

For a second season, I've paddled a dragon boat with the Mighty Women, and felt my stroke--and my arms--growing more powerful as the summer progressed.

On a blue-sky June day, my friend Patty and I paddled kayaks and enjoyed front-row sightings of multiple blue herons and other water fowl at the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge. That paddle had been on my bucket list for a decade.

I learned to shoot a bow and realized it's much more difficult than Legolas makes it look in "The Lord of the Rings" movies. By my second lesson with Kirby, I managed to hit the target, an empty milk jug, with three of my four arrows. If I ever encounter a ferocious orc, I'm ready to take him on!

Kirby and I paddled kayaks a few times this summer. My favorite was when we paddled with more than a dozen others in handcrafted skin-on-frame kayaks at the confluence of the Colville and Columbia rivers in Northeastern Washington where I was raised.

With Kirby I also camped along the Deschutes River, hiked the Old Columbia River Gorge Highway trail, toured Maryhill Museum of Art, the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and saw Native American petroglyphs along the Columbia River. All these had been on my bucket list for years.

Another longtime dream of mine was realized when we camped in a tipi, something I'd wanted to do since seeing tipis in Montana many years ago.

We swing danced on the grass at the Great Circle Music Festival near La Grande, Oregon, to the music of Bitterroot, Kory Quinn and my cousin, Janis Carper and her honey, Cris Peterson. I also hula-hooped to the music with my new friend, Ryleigh, a gutsy first-grader who already is paddling her own canoe.

After a three-decade hiatus, I took up drumming again. Both Kirby and I had been drummers at our respective high schools, but I hadn't played since then. At Rhythm Traders, a really cool percussion store in Portland, we played many African djembe drums in our quest to find the perfect drum for me. love having a drum again! I I'd forgotten the joy that drumming brings me. Why had I stopped doing something that makes me happy?

Over the summer I've played my drum to accompany Kirby's guitar playing and singing in the garden at Wisteria Cottage, under a star-spattered sky in Eastern Oregon and then for a few nights around a campfire under a full moon, while surrounded by Kirby and other buckskin-clad primitive skills enthusiasts and musicians at the Echoes in Time gathering at Champoeg State Park.

Through the window at the peak of the ceiling in Wisteria Cottage, I've watched the moon progress through the sky many a summer night as I played my drum alone, finding a beat that's true to the joyful woman I've become.

I'm going to miss that inspiring view of the moon through that high window. But I'm looking forward to tapping out new rhythms as I explore the view awaiting me around the next bend.

Seeking Sweet Sanctuary

Crash!

I  was awakened at 4 a.m. by the Dumpster lid being thrown open. Again.

Sometimes this occurs several times a night when people who are down on their luck rummage through my apartment building's enormous recycling and garbage bins searching for bottles and cans to redeem for cash. Perhaps they're even looking for food. That's sobering. Even heartbreaking.

But the bins are located immediately below my living room window, so mostly it's a nuisance.

When the crash woke me the first night in my apartment, my first thought was that someone had broken down my apartment door. Now that I've endured these nightly interruptions for three months, I just roll over and try to go back to sleep.

If I can't go back to sleep, I grab my laptop and write.

This morning I couldn't find sleep again. If I weren't so exhausted, I would be giddy. Today I am moving from this noisy apartment to my new home, which I refer to as the Duplex of my Dreams. Never did I believe a 1,000-square-foot duplex could be sanctuary to me.

Five months ago, I was a homeowner with a good job that paid a living wage. When I was laid off, I had to sell my house immediately before it became a short sale. A week before Christmas, I moved into this diminuitive one-bedroom apartment.

At the time, it was a sanctuary. I needed to move quickly, and of all the apartments I looked at, this one was clearly the best in my price range.

But I hadn't lived in an apartment for more than two decades, and the transition from quiet nights in a house to interrupted slumber in this apartment has taken its toll. Even with ideal sleep conditions, I am an insomniac. Most people likely could sleep through the noises that have robbed my sleep and frayed my edges. But I am a light sleeper.

After three months of o'dark thirty Dumpster action outside my front door and my oblivious, noisy neighbor whose television blares all night through our common bedroom walls, the sleeplessness has worn me out.

Now that I am working again, sleep is essential. So even though I will lose my hefty deposit, I am moving today to a quiet duplex in my old residential neighborhood sans Dumpster and noisy neighbors. The tenant on the other side of my duplex is an older single woman who owns a cat.

This apartment has its charms. Built in 1928, it has hardwood floors, French doors and a cozy gas fireplace. It's in the heart of a trendy commercial district with coffee shops, ethnic restaurants, antique stores and a tattoo parlor just across the alley from my living room windows.

If I were 25, this would be the ideal place to live. It has a great vibe and so much to do. The tattoo parlor is so close that I could get a tattoo practically by just sticking my arm out my window. Alas, I am not 25, and I don't want a tattoo. I just want to sleep soundly.

My new home also has charm. Built in the 1940s, it has hardwood floors, built-ins, windows for glorious natural light, a humongous kitchen, oodles of storage space and even a private, tiny backyard with a patio and garden space. My new sanctuary.

For the past three months, my cat, Anakin Skywalker, has been forced to be an indoor kitty. Now he can find his own santctuary by escaping the confines of the house to lie in the sun.

My new place is also within easy walking distance of this trendy neighborhood so I can have the best of both worlds: divine sleep, essential garden therapy and still being walking distance to my favorite coffee shop.

Last Saturday night, knowing it was the last weekend in my apartment, I took a farewell stroll through my trendy neighborhood to Ice Cream Renaissance, where I ordered my favorite: one scoop of Bittersweet Chocolate Love Affair ice cream on a sugar cone. It was the first ice cream I'd had in three months.

As I walked back to my apartment, I savored the flavor of the ice cream and my neighborhood. Because it was St. Patrick's Day, bagpipers wearing kilts were performing at Pop Culture. People had spilled onto the sidewalk to chat. I spied the owner of the Moroccan restaurant across the street listening to the bagpipes too.

Midway through my ice cream, I realized how amazing it has been to be a part of this neighborhood when I needed the sanctuary it offered. And how blessed I am to be able to move forward into my new sanctuary offering peaceful slumber and a garden to boot.

I took another lick of Bittersweet Chocolate Love Affair and walked home, dreaming of planting tomatoes, sunflowers and lavender.