04.14.10
Posted in Portland, Writing at 10:03 am by Bridget Zinn
You give some people a tiny bit of fame and they just can’t get enough. As is the case with Barrett’s mom — her hands made the last post and then she really really really wanted to get her face in. So I’m indulging her. Us in Forest Park:
This also seems to be the case with my cats who usually see the internet as something to sit in front of, but I’ve noticed that since I haven’t blogged about them for a while they’ll be laying around looking cute and then see me looking and seem to make an effort to look extra cute. Also, Harpo jumps up on the back of Barrett’s office chair, puts his two front paws on Barrett’s shoulder and peers over it to look into his work webcam making loud commentary right in his ear. This has lost him his hanging out in Barrett’s office when he is actually using the webcam privileges. An example of cuteness:
And here’s an old one where they tried tweaking the cute but ended up just looking weird:
But I do have a nice picture of my friend April Henry looking cute at her book signing last night:
Her fame is burgeoning far beyond the reaches of my blog. New York Times Bestselling Author PLUS she just got a TWO PAGE SPREAD in Henry Holt’s catalog PLUS an additional full page ad in the back of the catalog!!
V. exciting stuff.
Must slip in some writing before cats wake up and insist that I pay attention to their cuteness.
Love to you all,
Bridget
Permalink
04.04.10
Posted in Portland at 6:18 pm by Bridget Zinn
Barrett’s mom is in town and we went out for Easter Dim Sum at Fong Chong’s this morning (you can see her hands poised over her plate across the table):
Then we went to look at the blooms. The fruit trees have their Party Hair on:
And I have my new Party Hair:
Then we ended up at the Tao of Tea on Belmont for the first time which exceeded all of my tea shop expectations. The Yunnan tea even came in a Yixing teapot (which I was briefly obsessed with earlier this year and why I should never be allowed to use the internet — one day I didn’t know I needed a Yixing teapot for my favorite tea and the next day it was a Must Have. I haven’t found my dream Yixing teapot yet, but it’s only a matter of time. And a few more internet searches).
Yixing teapot:
Yum. Delicious tea.
And I here is my new All Purpose Hair:
Happy Easter!
Love,
Bridget
Permalink
02.25.10
Posted in Portland at 10:12 pm by Bridget Zinn
So. Tired. Of. Itching.
The rash is SO much better than it was — I no longer look like someone cursed me or put joke “horrible rash makeup” on me. I like to think that it just looks like I’ve been doing a bit of skiing in the mountains and have a nasty case of wind chap. Or possibly a run in with microdermabrasion which would instill hope that at the end I would come out looking radiant (for those of you not familiar with microdermabrasion it is where they shave down your skin with some kind of machine in order to get rid of all sign of wrinkles etc., but somewhere between the original look and radiance you end up looking like a slab of raw meat in a deli case).
But it itches. Itch, itch, itch, itch, try to sleep, wake myself up scratching, itch itch itch ITCH ITCH. I am trying all sorts of interesting remedies — thanks to everyone who sent me suggestions and to Sharee, my neighborhood FG, who dropped off a sample of neem cream this morning. I feel for you all, my sensitive skin sisters (well, and my dad, who recommended A&D ointment which is on the schedule for trial tonight, except that Barrett just informed me he looked for it everywhere and couldn’t find it and possibly they don’t make it anymore?) and all of your rashy pain.
We go through life being SO careful about every single thing that comes into contact with our skin — avoiding things like the sun, jellyfish, and exciting new creams that carry even the slightest hint of aroma, and going out of our way to use only hypo-allergenic unscented laundry detergent and shower gel. Then WHAM! something like this sneaks up on you and you get the worst rash you’ve ever had as though your skin is making up for all of the years of non-rash so that somehow it is both weepy and painfully dry, both inflamed and itchy. Very, very itchy.
To the point that I actually took the narcotics my doctor recommended last week and I absolutely hate narcotics for many reasons such as how they make everything all hazy and soft around the edges, but the minute you go off of them, the world is all sharp elbows and pointy bits and all of those emotions that were soft and floaty before zip to the surface and you find yourself sobbing over an article in Edible Portland on Future Farmers of America.
I’m pretty sure that this is not why I cried through the first ten minutes of the fabulous, fabulous film UP! and then laughed hysterically through most of the rest, I think really the movie would have done that to me anyway, but possibly going off narcotics on Sunday had a smidge to do with it. If you haven’t seen this movie, you must. It’s so brilliant. One of those stories that, if you’re a writer, makes you wish you could come up with something half that good. Go watch it!
As I promised you Fun Times, Sunshine and Rainbows etc. I’m posting pics from a little game we played over the weekend called Flower Hunt. A game with rules so mysterious they really can’t be discussed except to mention how I always seem to be winning (Barrett never stood a chance). 
I’m off to try the next skin cream on my list. So far Aveeno has been at the top, but we’ll see how some of these other suggestions go. Fingers crossed!
Love to you all,
Bridget
Permalink
02.17.10
Posted in Portland at 2:20 pm by Bridget Zinn
It is gorgeous here. Flowers are popping up all over the place, the sun is shining, and the air smells rich and fresh and spring-like. I can’t help but fall in love with Portland all over again.
It would be much more fun if I wasn’t getting my ass kicked by this round of chemo. I’m on a new study and they like to start you off at full power which means a big bucketfull of blech — fatigue, gi ruckus, nausea, body aches etc.
I’m drinking a lot of tea.
In other news, Barrett launched a new website he designed for author and friend April Henry. It is DIVINE and FABULOUS and I CAN’T WAIT FOR YOU ALL TO SEE IT!
I hope everyone is having a great week!
Love to you all,
Bridget
Permalink
01.27.10
Posted in Portland at 4:35 pm by Bridget Zinn
Those of you who are friends with Barrett on facebook may have read a bit about our big break in last week. Why, you might ask, would anyone bother breaking into our little run down rental when we are surrounded by so many lovely homes that probably have things worth stealing in them?
One reason: because the other houses weren’t harboring an imaginary person named Trudi which apparently we were.
It happened like this — there I was doing the Very Important Work of healing from surgery (this involves a lot of sleeping) and some time around 12 in the morning or so, I was woken up by a violent banging sound. I poked Barrett. He mumbled something about the upstairs neighbors who work odd hours. More violent banging. I poked him again and said “I’m pretty sure it’s not the neighbors.”
Bravely standing two rooms away and around behind the door, I listened while Barrett hunted down the source of the sound.
“Um, hello?” Barrett, still half-asleep and befuddled, from our kitchen.
Bang, bang, bang, “I want Trudi. You’re hiding Trudi. Let me in to get Trudi.”
“Uh yeah, Trudi doesn’t live here. In fact, I don’t know anyone named Trudi. Hey, did you break the locks off the screen doors? You did, you broke the doors!”
“The guy upstairs told me to.”
“You need to leave.”
Some more back and forth about Trudi. Then, “Can I at least come in for a glass of water?”
“You broke two of our doors, I’m not giving you a glass of water.”
The guy wandered off our back porch and we called the police.
They asked us to look outside to see where the guy went.
Barrett checked out back, didn’t see anything, checked out front and THERE HE WAS, LOOKING BACK IN!!!
Eek!
So the cops came, talked to our upstairs neighbor who had not told the guy to break down our back door, ID’ed the guy and discovered that he was off his meds and had all sorts of other colorful incidences on record. “The guy upstairs” was a voice in his own head. Lovely. As the cops were doing their thing, our upstairs neighbor’s girlfriend came home from work just in time to be frightened by the sight of two squad cars in front of our place and to get cursed at by the crazy guy who’d tried to break in.
*sigh*
Life is not boring here.
In other news, I’m healing up fine. Bizarre how quickly I went from being held together just by glue and two stitches to having the skin grow together to give me three lovely scars in my mid-section.
And I still have eight and a half more days of chemo-less freedom!
Love to you all,
Bridget
Permalink
