Can you believe I didn’t post a Feel Good Friday last week? Did you miss it? I was too busy being present at this fabulous wedding weekend. It was just the best. Collage on insta talking about how much I love everyone. So now you get lots of talking and lots of photos, just one hour before Friday is over.
From a travelogue perspective, this particular trip was my absolute favorite of many Portland-area trips. Hood River was a blast. I didn’t see much of it. But it was gorgeous, and Mt. Hood Organic Farms was an absolutely stunning working farm, orchard, gardens, and wedding venue with a little jewelbox cottage for getting ready in. We stayed in a great basement airbnb in Hood River. When we got back to Portland, I did the brewery scene for the first time—and that was super fun. Barrel 10 was my fave, turns out it’s a Bend brewery with an auxiliary in Portland. I walked all along the river and all through downtown.
And of course, I spent a tremendous amount of time out on that famous porch of my friends.
But from a friend and family perspective, it was beyond anything I imagined. I booked a flight for my brother on Monday to land Thursday, because I couldn’t stand the thought of going to another wedding alone, and I assumed I would spend much of the wedding happy-sad and wondering what the hell I am doing with my life (that’s what happened last Labor Day weekend wedding, anyway, so there was precedent) while simultaneously being genuinely happy for my friends getting married. But here’s the thing: that didn’t happen. I had so. much. fun. that I forgot to contemplate life.
In the interest of maintaining the integrity of the weekend, which my travel-buddy-couple called “emotionally intense” because my brother is the leader of an international circling group and can’t really turn that part of himself off, I’ll just lay it out there: I thought I’d be sad because there was a recent breakup, there was closure, there was recent disappointment, there were fears about singleness, about turning 32 that weekend, about work.
But I wasn’t sad. Sure, I talked with my brother and friends about these things, but they didn’t matter. What mattered was spending time with the family of the bride, whose parents are very much my second family, and my friends (and their boyfriends, who I got to meet for the first time … it’s complicated. We’re really close, but we’ve only met like 3 times and don’t talk much between seeing each other. But we’re legitimately really close. I took to saying that I like these friends more than some people I call my friends at home … and we all know how much I love my friends at home). It was great.
And so I love everyone. And am ridiculously grateful for the weekend, the experience, and the people.
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