Today we left the island, because the larder was bare, and the island stores are oh so very expensive. And Thanksgiving is soon, and the fambly is coming for that, so much shopping in bulk needed to be done.
We caught an early ferry over to Anacortes. Despite rain being predicted all this week (as I keep saying), it was a beautiful day.
That’s the ferry terminal at Orcas, just after we’ve pulled out, heading to Shaw Island.
In Anacortes, we got the car washed (because we’re dying to have it rain!) (no, actually, because right after we left Portland, a truck on the highway blew a hose of antifreeze or something, spraying all the cars around him with something noxious and oily and awful, and we needed to make that be gone), then met up with my brother’s girlfriend’s mom, who lives there; together we went to Costco out at Mt. Vernon (after a Thanksgiving-brainstorming session), and bought Many Groceries And Staples.
And then she went about her business while we drove on up to Bellingham, to the Incredibly Crowded Trader Joe’s (I almost thought I was back in San Francisco again), where we bought even MORE groceries (had to use two carts), and I began to have an emotional meltdown, because even though it made perfectly logical sense to buy seven weeks of staples and minimally perishable groceries at once, stocking the larder and avoiding island prices, the actuality of it was rather overwhelming.
So there was nothing to be done for it but to walk over to a nursery afterwards and spend more money. “We’re having a psychotic stress-release response,” Mark said, and I don’t think he was wrong.
Anyway, we got nice herb plants to grow in the window here, incidentally saving even more money for the future. Right?
And it’s nice to have growing things. I do miss the orchids. And the garden. Though it is amazingly lovely here.
And now I am not going to leave this island till Christmas.