running

FRESH BREAD

/ janpriddyoregon / 8 Comments

This is what happens when you bake weekly for almost three years. A high rounded loaf just the way you assumed it would come out of the oven. Without support beyond experience, bread is the result of healthy ingredients and practice. That’s the way life goes, I think. We work at it, do the best we can, and we eat what we take from the oven.

About 10″ across and 5″ tall, I “wind up” the dough to shape a loaf without a pan. It was baked in the middle of a flat pizza pan. (Even the Haystack loaves had special pans with short sides providing some support and structure.)

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SEVENTY

/ janpriddyoregon / 26 Comments

Yes, today I am a septuagenarian, seventy years old. (Please don’t say “seventy years young”—I find that too sticky-cute and somewhat insulting. I’ve earned my years.)

I made myself an applecake yesterday evening so that we could have it for breakfast after my run this morning. I used heritage pink apples gifted by a friend and the green ones that were in the crisper. I love baking and rarely have an excuse to bake other than bread, so this was fun. I made lemon curd the day before yesterday for a lemon pie this evening. We are having Dungeness crab mac&cheese for dinner and Gary has put a bottle of genuine Champagne in the fridge! Yes, it’s all about the food.
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RUNNING A RACE

/ janpriddyoregon / 16 Comments

The Great Columbia Crossing, a 10k run mostly on the Megler Bridge, limited entries this year to 3,500. It filled last month. We started on the Washington side at Dismal Nitch, ran west a mile to the first suspension section on the north side of the Columbia River, over that and then south three miles on the flat portion which is really not a “bridge” by my reconning. It is an elevated two-lane highway. Then the highway tips upward for a killing hill (okay, killing for me—I could not run that hill 20 years ago and not today either) and over the suspension bridge on the Oregon side, down a long curved ramp and a final mile or so, west and east, at the Port of Astoria.

I’d run it before, meaning to take my time, but hustling in the face of the crush. I had much the same intentions of not hurrying this morning. I would not run that awful hill in the fifth mile. I would not.

Before the start at Dismal Nitch on the Washington side of the Columbia River. Andrew is a former student who graduated with my older son in 1998. He recognized me first. Another student Nora (SHS 1996) ran up and gave me a hug before the start. I saw each of them again on the Washington side in my last half mile! (Andrew’s photo with his girlfriend at right)
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CLEANING HOUSE, pt. 2

/ janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments

One day I only sorted a single box, the next day I powered through six. Negatives and family photos defy intentions. Nevertheless, I have made progress even during a “Very Bad Week.”

My grandfather’s canes and my dad’s fishing poles remain undisturbed, but the stacks of boxes on the bed are gone, and some of what was stashed on the floor too. The Kitchen Queen in the far corner will be leaving the building, because it can. It is a handsome piece, but no longer fits in our kitchen and does not belong in this bedroom. (Anyone?) The pew is barely visible against the taller windows. It will find its new place once the kitchen furniture moves out, probably next week. I returned new bedding I bought last week. The linen closet is already too full.

My upcoming 10k, diet, and writing. A body and a cherry pitter. Regaining control?

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Every. Other. Day.

/ janpriddyoregon / 14 Comments

I meant to write this post the other day, which was the one-year anniversary of receiving the keys to our Portland Condo. Instead, I baked, worked on a manuscript for a friend, napped, ran two miles and walked another.

About running at nearly seventy…

The view north from Hug Point. The milk wagon came around this headland in the 20s and 30s when my mother was a girl.
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EXERCISE

/ janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

I got in a couple of running miles this morning. We have pretty much nailed down our weekly routine but I still have to think when I first wake: Where am I?

We found nineteen pieces of sea glass yesterday, seventeen the day before.

This photo isn’t from yesterday, big pieces but representative of the colors we most often find: colorless, pale greens, brighter greens, and brown. There are colors we each particularly rejoice to find. Gary once found a large cobalt blue piece. I love a peculiar intense and old blue-green.
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PLANNING ATTENTION

/ janpriddyoregon / 8 Comments

Attention is the beginning of devotion.

—Mary Oliver
Our son Alan and his daughter E.V. wearing the sweater I knit her for Christmas.

I had to think hard about what happened in 2021. It was not a terrible year, not even a bad one. “Inconvenient”, as a friend suggested in 2020, a year that felt much worse. So goodbye to two years of pandemic and hello to a third. I have plans.

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IN & OUT of line

/ janpriddyoregon / 10 Comments

Yesterday, which was meant to be our day of rest before the drive to Portland, the Christmas tree leaked.

Here is the tree hung from the ceiling on fishing line, inside a plastic bucket with water, which is inside the huge Chinese jardiniere that came from my Aunt Marcie. We have put up our tree this way for years.

Unbeknownst to us the bucket developed a 1″ crack. Water leaked into the huge clay pot, which would have held it, but someone in a previous generation drilled holes in the bottom to use it as a planter. I had plugged the holes and for a decade it was home to a goldfish, eventually killed by toxic Chinese fish food. Gary had removed the plugs. Hence: water all over the floor while we were out walking. Thank goodness we had not gotten around to decorating the tree.
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SOME ADJUSTmeant

/ janpriddyoregon / 13 Comments

Pre-pandemic, we followed a simple route from coast to the city at least twice a month. We left home early and returned before dark. We shopped at the Farmers Market, saw family, went to the music store, visited the nursery, and walked through Powell’s Book Store. We were always in a hurry because of weather and darkness and animals waiting at home. Our last dog and our last cat are gone now, but the other big difference is that now we have a place to stay.

This is one of my favorite skies—when a roll of cloud sits out on the horizon, but the sky overhead is clear. You can see the sky reflected in wave-washed sand.
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