Ingredients
- 3 wine tastings = ~27 samples of wine
(catching up on lost time)
- 1 bartender named Matt at a farm-to-table restaurant who gave us free natural fruit sodas and an all-organic dessert platter as we convinced him to get back into theatre
(catching up on his life story)
- 3 nights at the Fountain Grove Inn in Sonoma Wine Country to make up for 1 night at the Knight's Inn
(the Knight's Inn needs to catch up to life)
- 90 million items on the gluten free menus at Greenleaf's in Ashland, OR
(world, get on the Pacific Northwest's level: every single one of Portland's crazy unique food trucks had gf options, and that includes the mind-blowing savory PB sandwich, fancy crepe, and weird gourmet french fry trucks)
*CATCH UP! from the airplane from NYC to Denver to Burbank, CA! (difficult to obtain, special order upon request)*
- A group of strangers waiting at the quiet airplane gate at 7am on a Wednesday + the ever-consistent CNN HLN flatscreen TV + Puppy Conan: [Why was CNN showing coverage of the Conan Show? The only answer I care about is PUPPY CONAN. (you must watch all the Puppy Conan links)] Resulting in the entire gate laughing together. About puppies. Especially the Toronto mayor pug.
- 1 revelation from which these men can't hide: The on-flight movie was Frozen. (Did they know I was coming?!) As soon as the credits started rolling, a rush line to the bathroom flooded the aisles. Who did it mainly include? 30+-year-old men. Duly noted.
Instructions
1. Take 5 ironic selfies in your onesie.
2. Get tipsy off of the first few 1/8-filled glasses during your first wine tasting, so you have an excuse for responding to the wine-waiter's photo of his 23-year-old son with an unenthusiastic "he's tall". 
3. Discover the winery that has sparkling wine produced only for Disney, a chardonnay recognized by National Geographic, and the sparkling cuveé commissioned by the White House for the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit Meetings. So, for all intensive purposes, they ended the Cold War. (and are still cool enough to celebrate rainbows).
4. Get Tink wasted. JUST KIDDING DON'T: don't do that to anyone: rather, nurse your own glass gently with her and ask her father for her 
5. Remember Matt? Praise his glory. And any salted caramel ice cream that stays your entire body motionless. 
6. Eat this for dinner. (Thank goodness you gave up chocolate for Lent, right?, because now this is SO HEALTHY!)
7. Encroach on a intimate private conversation. (They shouldn't have been in a hotel parking lot, that's all I'm saying.)
8. 3 beds? Necessary? Possible?
9. Demolish Portland('s food trucks)(' food). Brag about it on various social media. Catch a glimpse of what it feels like to be perfect.
Basically, Imma tell you all you need to know in 5 words: Pacific Northwest be courteously organic.
That, and I realized everyone should live their life with a simple playwriting lesson in mind, taught to me by my lovely playwriting teacher at Northwestern: once you realize you have a routine, break it. When writing a play, this refers to keeping your readers-- and your characters-- on their toes and not letting the audience get ahead of the play. Breaking the routine, anything settled or "usual" or expected in your play (be it a character's behavior, sequence of events, or even the format), is what moves the story forward. If you feel yourself getting in a rut, find a routine and totally change it.
I think that's what I just did with my life. I think it's what everyone needs more often than we let ourselves. I think it's cathartic. I think this is getting too serious, but I'm in a Rodeway Inn all night. I was unhappy in my weekly (actually, monthly) routine in NY: it was cold, wet, loud, sad, and never-ending fast. I worked 7 days a week, had consistently inconsistent hot water, took the same trains and busses, and saw the same sights every day because I had no time to do anything different. Then, all of a sudden, I was flying to California in 5 days. However, it's less about the stuff & routine that I left. It's all about the MOUNTAINS.
(cue Alice Ripley? No, absolutely not.)
I've lived 22 years of my life without seeing mountains. Or snow-capped mountains. Or waterfalls coming out of mountains. Or hiking up mountains. Or Shakespearean-themed towns nestled in the mountains. Or the view of mountains from my Super 8. Or hundreds of vineyards in mountains. Or driving through mountains for hours. Or cities so encapsulated by mountains that everyone feels they must wear flannel or modern young lumberjack-wear. Now I've seen all these mountains, and more. In hot places. In chilly places. In organic farm-to-table locally grown non-GMO grass-fed vegetarian sustainable picturesque storybook places. In hick town places. In kind places. In organic can mean more than food places. In how-did-this-trendy-fresh-cafe-get-in-this-nothing-hill-town places. In the Fountaingrove Inn and the Econolodge. And I keep asking myself "how have I lived in this country my whole life and not known what half of it even looked like? How could I have not known these breathtaking sights existed?"
Well, a. you could say "look at a book/are you serious?/did you go to school?/Anna." or b. you could be/have been in the same boat as me. (That's correct, there are only two options.) Needless to say: find yourself in the same locale/situation for long enough? Go. Leave! Go somewhere! Heck, I found myself in the same landscape for 22 years-- and that was spanning 3 different states in 2 different time zones-- and that's a routine in itself. Sure, I've seen Cancun and Niagra Falls and London and even the Berkshires which has mountains but I kinda think they're hills (plus, it's cold there)-- but they aren't tree-lined or red rock, pointy or tofu-shaped, snow-capped or desert MOUNTAINS. Who knew land wasn't flat?
But now we're in Fargo, so everything's flat.
My mom recently started a brand-new, totally different full-time job. A handful of days ago, my 22-year-old best friend accepted an offer for a PhD program. Last week, my boyfriend bought a plane ticket for a 2-week-trip to Peru a month away. This summer, my dad's going taking off work to go South Carolina for 10 days. After this tour ends in June, I have no idea what I'm doing. Regardless of the reasoning or context behind any of these things, they all make the person happy or excited-- and they keep us on our feet. Yeah, it may involve some tough adapting, training, many years of schooling, money, planning, possible judgement from others, uncertainty, and a little bit of fear. (maybe a butt-ton of fear for the latter example) But dang. Routines be breaking. Life happens. Pacific Northwest be courteously organic. MOUNTAINS happen.
Watching Fargo in Fargo
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