...Where Life is Beautiful All the Time

This past week or so has been pretty crazy!

Crazy Number One: Our apartment complex has a pool. One would think that this is a GREAT thing; the problem is that the pool has been broken for over a year. We have been trying to fix it since we started to work here.
Well, temperatures in the hundreds last week brought out some frustrated residents, angry corporate VP’s, confused apartment managers and hard-working pool fixing men; hopefully the pool will be up and running before the end of the week. (Luke has put enough shock in the water to melt someone’s skin off if they try to swim in it now. I don’t know who would want to because it is still sort of brownish/greenish.)

Crazy Number Two: Portland is supposed to be rainy right? Since we’ve been here it hasn’t rained. It’s been HOT!

Our apartment doesn’t have air conditioning and the sun sets on the one wall in our house with two huge windows and a sliding glass door. The temperature gets pretty high in the apartment so the Mecham family seeks shelter (with A/C) elsewhere whenever possible. We go to the malls, Home Depot, you get the idea. Our trip to IKEA and Target produced some nifty curtains designed to keep out the heat. It helped a little. But I say that any help is more than we got before so, LONG LIVE CURTAINS!
Luke is used to the heat, but he is also used to it cooling down at night. It hasn’t been cooling down here. We’ve learned that it’s hard to sleep comfortably in an 85 degree apartment – even with the fans blowing – and impossible to snuggle with your spouse (because your skin sticks to the other person’s skin and it makes this gross peeling noise when you try and unsitck yourself…it’s uncomfortable; you get the point.)
Z hates the heat too. She’s also cutting in her first tooth so that makes her even crankier. To help with the heat, we just let her run around in a diaper. I admit I am jealous.
Enough whining! Let me tell you a little bit about our lives here in Portland.
I love it here. I love Oregon. I love the green.

I even love driving here in the freeway traffic– as long as I am the one doing the driving. Luke doesn’t trust my maps and so he tries not to follow them sometimes. 9.999 times out of 10 my directions are perfectly fine and get us there in a timely manner. I’ve learned that if I drive it is a lot less stressful.

I am a sucker for hole-in-the-wall restaurants and Portland has a TON of them. I can’t wait to go try some!

I love the location of where we live. Our complex is surrounded by huge trees; it is like we live in the forest.
*Aslynn's new favorite way to fall asleep. I'm not sleeping - Luke told me not to look at the camera.*
We inherited a membership to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group. They deliver fresh organic produce to our house every Monday. We have vegetables coming out of our ears. We are never able to use it all, so I often feel wasteful.
A couple of times we’ve gotten vegetables that I have never seen before. I have to use Google to find what it is and how I can cook it.
All the produce gives me a reason to find more recipes and try them out – though I haven’t been cooking a whole lot because it’s been too hot. We’ve been eating a lot of cold sandwiches. But we get at least two heads of lettuce a week so our sandwiches are AMAZING. (Yes, to me a sandwich with lettuce makes all the difference in the world.)

On Saturday I wanted to go to the county fair because I was craving some fair food – elephant ears, giant fajitas, etc. Plus, it was free admission!

So I finally talked Luke into going. Poor kid had never been to a real fair before so he wasn’t fully prepared for the experience. He was impressed with all the stuff there was to do and see. I told him the Deschutes County fair was even better. I wore him out before I was finished looking at everything. Still, the whole things seems to have left a good taste in his mouth (I was trying to be punny…we had a gyro and it was wonderful) because Luke wants to go to the Oregon State fair at the end of this month.