November is our wettest month, with over twelve inches falling on average. I used to claim that there would be a week in November where rain falls 24/7. I might be forgiven for thinking all twelve average inches have fallen in the past two weeks. Creeks are high, streams running down into the sand every few feet.

We met Phil from our water department on our morning walk the last time we got out on Saturday. We had forecast to have two inches of rain in the previous 36 hours. He said we’d had six. Well, no wonder.

Our neighbor’s overflow from a clogged driveway drain slid under our concrete wall and all the way under our building too. It’s not our neighbor’s fault, but it is his responsibility to clear his drains and ensure his runoff does not continue to flow onto our property.

It is hard for people used to ten or thirty or even forty inches of rainfall a year to wrap their brains around an average of ninety. A recent neighbor (new to the neighborhood, but not the north coast) wondered how long the owner had lived here before remodeling. Gary said he hadn’t ever lived here.

“Oh. That explains a lot,” said Patrick.

Despite storm after storm, despite downpours like a firehose on the side of the house, we have had some good walks. I have been writing and knitting and binging on a Korean series set in the publishing industry. (The pulping of damaged unsold books is so painful that the Editor in Chief cannot watch, but interns are taken to view the process. When the aide put in charge of my old high school library revealed she’d had all the “extra” books pulped, I had to leave the room and sit down for a cry. My family had donated hundreds of books to the library—no one asked if we might want one or two back.)

We meant to drive in to Portland on Friday but the rain was so heavy and a tree was down, briefly blocking highway 101. That was our excuse to stay put. Then we thought we would go Saturday, but after a good walk, we decided to stay put again. We thought we might go Sunday, but we are expecting a package today. Maybe later today after we pick up the mail? Or not. There is a high wind warning till early afternoon. [We went for a dryish walk—70pmh gusts made walking a challenge.]

The vote on the repiping project for our condo building is supposed to be tomorrow, but apparently there are still many questions.

Over my nearly seventy years, home repairs, the big ones, are rarely part of the plan. The broken water line, the new roof, the leaks and cracks, the ever-increasing property taxes. Sometimes we set money aside for one thing and it flies away to pay for something more urgent. We spent the money to rebuild our deck in residing the west face of the house. My husband and I raised two boys on a grocer’s and a teacher’s salaries. Money was always tight. Our income is now fixed, including small pensions that are not tied to COL increases. We have been frugal throughout most of our marriage. We know how to do that.  

Bottom line, we wanted the NW Portland neighborhood, that building, and even that unit. Our choice has, in most ways, turned out better that we hoped. Yes, as another resident pointed out, we could spend less for a larger unit in another part of Portland. We monitored houses and condos all over the city for many years. That was true even without the assessment, but we didn’t want to live in another part of Portland.

Gary and I wanted to live at The Embassy. 

What is it they say that matters most in real estate? Location, location, location. It is true in my experience. I have walked beaches all around Puget Sound and up and down the Oregon coast. They are all stunning and in Oregon all are accessible because Oregon’s beaches are public and monitored by the parks system rather than fenced off and private. I have admired gravely beaches and rocky shorelines. I have collected shells and glass from any number of beaches. I love this one.

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Writing update: I have 33,097 words on NaNo as of 5am this morning. I have barely begun my day’s work on that manuscript—but at halfway through the month and over halfway through my word count, so far, so good. I keep thinking I am stuck and have run out of words, and then I find more. Even so, I felt done with Tula’s first-person voice a couple of days ago. I have begun writing about other people that waited in the wings. Center stage now are two old woman and a Korean girl who was bullied in school, but I don’t know enough about China or Korea to tell the stories of these people properly. (I have read novels from both countries, but never been to either. My knowledge is theoretical and inadequate.) My word count includes miscellaneous writing of 4600 so my personal NaNo goal is to add almost 60k to what I began four years ago and have over 75k in my novella-turned-novel. The rewrites will be excruciating.