Hey, Gabriel! Hey there! Hi hi hi! Are you nervous? The only way out is through!
For those of you who do not know Gabriel: he is not in the above photo. He says I always misrepresent him though, so maybe he will dispute that.
Anyway that's Claudia. I'll get to her in a minute.
How's this for irony? Gabriel now holds a peculiar record when it comes to participation in my Birth Week: I have spent time with him during the week of my birthday every single year
since 2003—more than any other person I know. And yet, he's also the only person I know who doesn't think how I approach celebrating my birthday is awesome. He thinks it's dumb as hell! But, he doesn't want to be left out. Also, perhaps there's an element here of our friendship being more important to him than how dumb he thinks my Birth Week is.
Side note: until last year, Gabriel and Danielle—my two best friends—were tied for this record. But, because Danielle was having very challenging issues and struggles with a teenager daughter on the day we were supposed to hang out last year, she had to cancel at the last minute. It was the first time ever that Danielle and I did not hang out during the week of my birthday. I was really disappointed by the end of that incredibly long streak at first, but then I decided pretty quickly to get over it. 21 years in a row was a pretty damn good stretch, and shit happens. It's kind of amazing nothing came up in this way earlier.
Even more shit happens to Gabriel. I'm not saying that to be glib, truly. I only mean it's actually more amazing that Gabriel has managed this unbroken stretch, especially considering my approach to his participation in recent years: if I can include him, I'll be delighted; if I can't, well, we tried. Gabriel as a general rule cannot commit to plans more than a few days in advance. He far prefers spontaneity, which is a difficult fit with me as I plan things weeks, months, sometimes years in advance. I already know what my Birth Week themes will be in 2026 and in 2027. With Gabriel, I tend to just throw out what limited time is left open when the week is finally upon us. Somehow, we always find a way to make it work. (Last year, conveniently, his and Lea's wedding, scheduled for May the 4th, landed during my Birth Week. I did not make that an official part of it, though, and instead counted the weekend trip to Lopez Island in early April—because, by chance, my theme last year was Washington State Islands, and so I regarded that as an early prologue, of sorts. Of course, it only gave Gabriel more ammunition to insist I celebrate a "Birth Month" rather than a Birth Week, but, whatever. Semantics!)
I had finalized plans for
this year's Birth Week for all but one day by about the first week of April, with only Gabriel and Lynn not pinned down. I had an idea for running something by Gabriel when I would be in Tacoma—and therefore close to Gabriel's home in Federal Way—on Monday, and I would just throw out to them that I was going to be in Tacoma with Laney and Tracy and Gabriel and Lea would be welcome to join us.
But! I wound up on the phone with Gabriel late Friday night, and that was when he learned I would be stopping in Port Orchard on my way to Jennifer's house—on the same day he and Tess would be participating in an organism-identifying activity in Kingston. We were going to be on the Olympic Peninsula on the same day, and Port Orchard is a 40-minute drive from Kingston. This actually offered a scenario that was kind of the best of both worlds: it allowed Gabriel to make spontaneous plans (for the next day, anyway—to me, that's fucking spontaneous!); and it allowed me the satisfaction of his inclusion in my Birth Week—something that is actually very important to me, as I have no friends who are more important to me, the tendrils of chaotic bullshit in the history of our friendship past, present and future notwithstanding.
It did make my long day even longer yesterday. I already had two stops on the Birth Week Road planned yesterday, and now I had three. I crammed more into one day yesterday than I will have other day of my Birth Week this year. But Gabriel is worth it! So is Claudia and so is Jennifer.
Should I mention the time Gabriel said, "Matthew is ugly and fat!" Maybe not, because he never actually said that. But now he can say I misquoted him and we can agree. It's true!
Gabriel suggested a place in Port Orchard called
Whiskey Gulch. To his credit, he even cited it as a location with "a vista" so it would qualify for this year's theme of Observation Decks and Viewpoints. My intention was for the vistas to be up high, and according to whatismyelevation.com—I
finally found a website where I can just look this shit up (honestly, Gabriel of all people probably could have given me a recommendation there)—Whiskey Gulch is 8 ft (2 m) above sea level. I cannot deny, though, that the view from there was
pretty great. Totally worth it! It was even worth being just slightly too cold on the outdoor patio where we sat. I'll just blame the shadow and the position of the sun. Fucking planetary rotation! What a pain in the ass.
I ordered a cocktail called "Pink Starburst," and then was disappointed when it tasted like a Juicy Fruit candy. In my defense, I have had plenty of cocktails with names that refer to candy but did not literalize it in this manner, and were actually super tasty. This one was just dumb and weird. I was not super hungry so, even though Gabriel ordered a Bubba's Buffalo Shrinp'n Po Boy, I just ordered a side of onion rings. I could not remember the price of my cocktail and it is not listed on the menu online, and no sides at all were listed on the menu, so when I Venmoed the money for my order to Gabriel, I just guessed. He was going to cover it, but he had also said he had a present out in the car. "I want the other present instead!" I said. He said fine, Venmo me if you want. And so I did.
The other present was a brownie. The second brownie from a friend in as many weeks! This one was
way better than the so-called "peanut butter brownie" Mimi had offered me in Mount Vernon last weekend, which turned out to be wheat-free and made with oats, using peanut butter as a binding agent. It was surprisingly bland even as a wheat free baked treat, and had no peanut butter taste whatsoever—which had been what I was expecting. When Mimi asked how I liked it, the best I could muster was, "You're right—it's different!" The brownies Gabriel brought out, four small squares for each of us, were made by Lea, who is a reliably excellent baker—even when she makes her annual Christmas treats and becomes convinced they are subpar and is always wrong in that assessment. They had a salty kick that made me want to melt into the ground. This salted chocolate brownie was fucking amazing. I wanted to use it as a face mask. Highlight of my week so far! See? Totally worth squeezing Gabriel into the middle of my day yesterday.
Gabriel also had Tess with him, and another kid named Berkeley, who I spent a lot of time resisting the urge to call Stanford. I wasn't precisely clear on the nature of her relationship with Tess—I'm pretty sure I have the general idea, but maybe they have their own definition, or maybe they don't want to be defined. Whatever I might say would probably just make them roll their eyes, and since I am now pushing 50 (please excuse me while I vomit), I suppose that just means everything is as it's supposed to be. Side note: Tess went out of her way to refer to my supposed "Birth Month," clearly an indicator that Gabriel has trained her how to push my buttons.
There was some discussion as to whether Berkeley (not Stanford!) would get a Social Review point. Gabriel gave an elaborate explanation of how my Social Reviews work, which was perhaps 80% accurate. Good enough, I guess. Berekely can't possibly give a shit either way. My position at the time was that I don't know her well enough, and if I have no idea whether I'll even see someone again (this is
not a commentary on my expectation of Berkeley's commitment to Tess, though that was suggested), I don't tend to include them in my Social Review stats. In retrospect, however, given the level of engagement with her, and the fact that we literally discussed it, I guess Berkeley (not Ucla!) earned her Social Review point.
Tess did ask if she's ever been in the top 5 on my Social Review. No, she wouldn't have. She asked if Gabriel ever has. I'm tempted to say no, but it's possible it's happened once or twice, ages ago. I see Gabriel maybe twice every three months on average anymore, for a host of reasons. But it makes each time count that much more!
Anyway when we were done, of course, I wanted a group selfie. We went out onto a nearby pier, so there would be water behind us. I'm pretty delighted by the photo, I must say. It may be true that I once slapped Gabriel upside the head insanely hard in 1995 (it was thirty years ago! it's time to move on!), but I love him. The photo, as shots like this tend to do, genuinely warms my heart.
I guess I'll back up to Claudia now. You know, the one on the photo at the top of this post and who has nothing to do with Gabriel whatsoever. I became friends with her at PCC and we've stayed in touch, and now I go visit her at her home in Port Orchard a few times a year—typically including during my Birth Week, while I am on my way to Jennifer's house.
Claudia did say to me at one point, "Matthew, you're a good friend. You're such a good person!" I laughed at that and said, "That's something Gabriel would never say. Neither would Shobhit, for that matter." There was another point where Claudia said, "I think I know you pretty well," and all I could think was: not well enough to think twice about calling me a good person. (I genuinely think I am an incredible and amazing person. Even a beautiful person. There's a difference! Oh who am I kidding, I also think I am a good person. Not a perfect person, an often selfish and inconsiderate person, but still a good person.)
I kind of pushed back on how well she knows me, but she just repeated that she thinks she knows me well. To a degree, I suppose. But she's not in "Untouchable" territory—Claudia and I are good friends, and we have indeed shared a lot with each other. But she and I have not had experiences as intimate as I have had with the likes of Danielle or Gabriel. I was in the room, camcorder in hand, when both of Danielle's children were born. I was an eyewitness to Danielle's expelled placenta. I can think of at least three different times when Gabriel openly wept while on the phone with me, over the course of the past thirty years. Gabriel and I had intimately personal conversations in college that are kind of wild in retrospect.
I don't mean to diminish what I have with Claudia, which I actually value deeply. Claudia is one of a kind and that's my favorite thing about her. It's possible, actually—and this is genuinely occurring to me only just now—that she thinks of some of our conversations as a lot more intimate than I have thought to regard them. There has been a lot of vulnerability in what she has shared with me, I must concede. And I should be, and am, honored by that.
We only had about two hours together for my Birth Week this year. When I asked her if she would be around for me to stop by on my way to Jennifer's, she said she had to go somewhere in the afternoon and asked what time I would get there. I suggested the same time I got there last year, which had also been a bit early due to the low-tide time I wanted to get to McMicken Island with Jennifer and Matthew: 11:00 a.m. This meant catching the Fauntleroy ferry out of West Seattle to Southworth at 9:55. I had gotten to the terminal last year a solid hour early and so had nothing to worry about; this time I got there 25 minutes early and genuinely worried that I would not make it—so many cars were already lined up on the side of Fauntleroy Way SW.
I looked up wait times on the Washington State Ferries website, and they looked all out of whack; I could not make sense of them, except it looked like maybe my boat was seriously delayed? I came relatively close to abandoning the line and just driving around through Tacoma and the Narrows Bridge, which would still have gotten me to Port Orchard at 11 a.m., it just would have involved a hell of a lot more driving. I'm glad I stuck it out, though. The 9:55 ferry turned out to be 20 minutes delayed, and I got on the boat just fine. I got to Claudia's at 11:15 instead of 11:00.
Dylan was outside with a friend, apparently talking car mechanics. Claudia was outside as well, and they all welcomed me when I got out of the car. Dylan and his friend went off somewhere shortly thereafter, and Claudia and I walked the mile to downtown Port Orchard together—looking or the "
Observation Deck" I was dead set on seeing because I discovered online some weeks ago that apparently there was such a thing in Port Orchard, of all places—even if it "disguises a sewer treatment plant." This would barely be higher above sea level (13 ft, at its base anyway) than Whiskey Gulch, but the key difference was it was
literally called "Observation Deck." And this greatly amused me.
And then? We made our way to the location, and it had been fucking
demolished! For a
huge new civic construction project downtown. What a disappointment.
Claudia and I browsed downtown shops for a few minutes, but then when it got to be about 12:15 she said we needed to start walking back to the house. She had already said, when I asked when she needed to leave, "At the very latest, 1:00." And as we walked back, a brilliant idea occurred to me: "I've already thought of a perfect alternative observation deck." When she asked what, I said, "The deck at your house!" I mean: duh. As you can see from the photo at the top of this post, it overlooks the huge garden in her huge front yard, which is coming together beautifully thanks to her now-years' worth of yard work and gardening. She gives me a tour of the progress every time I visit. She's always too insecure about my interest: "Thank you for pretending to be interested," she'll say. I'm not going to say I'm
riveted, but I'm also not pretending! It brings her joy and that makes me happy for her.
She also had a particular thing in common with Gabriel, which was what naturally brought him up in our conversation during the tour of Claudia's yard: she's in a seemingly endless battle with ivy and blackberry bushes. I told her Gabriel is on a lifelong crusade against invasive species, and she was basically like, "He gets it." She took me to one particular corner of the yard she said was "the bane of my existence," which still has both ivy and blackberry bushes, and also bluebells. I asked her if bluebells are an invasive species, and she told me to ask Gabriel. So, I took a photo and texted it to him with the question, which he answered during our lunch at Whiskey Gulch. In retrospect, I could have
just Googled it, but I guess this way there could be a line of communication through me as a mutal friend.
I finally left shortly after visiting Ivy, Blackberry and Bluebell Corner, and then after my time with Gabriel and the kids, I had a roughly 45-minute drive to Union, the location Dad likes to call "Bumuck, Egypt." I mentioned to someone recently, I forget who, that when Matthew or Jennier say they are "going into town," they are talking about Shelton—a town of 10,000 that is a metropolis compared to Union, an unincorporated community with a population of 683. Jennifer and Matthew's house wasn't even readily identifiable by Google Maps when they first moved there in 2021, but thankfully it seems to be now. What hasn't changed is how the last five turns to their house—about a third of a mile—is on unpaved, gravel roads, with a posted speed limit of 10mph. (I tend to go 20.) It's otherwise in the middle of a wooded area, two neighboring houses barely visible through the trees. It's peaceful out there, I'll give it that.
Another upside:
Lake Cushman Lookout is all of a 30-minute drive from their house. I found this spot looking for high-vantage viewpoints near Shelton, at first discovering trails you can hike to even higher elevations above the lake, which looked from photos to be spectacular. But, that would have been a far greater time commitment, and much more physically strenuous, which I assumed Jennifer would not go for. (She later happily confirmed this.) The Lookout spot, easily accessed by driving to a small parking lot, was high enough up anyway: it's somewhere close to 200 feet above the surface of the lake, and the view is gorgeous.
We didn't spend a lot of time there, as it's just a spot to stop and take in the view—there aren't even any trails there. Matthew was very familiar with the area, though, and suggested we drove down to where there was a bridge across the lake—I was like: wait, what? There's
a bridge across the lake? He really made it sound like it cut across the middle, and I saw no bridge anywhere. "Is this bridge invisible?" I asked. Matthew said it was barely visible in the distance. Um, okay. Well: we did eventually reach a bridge, and it cut across the lake almost at its very north end, where of course the span is much shorter.
Matthew had said the bridge was "about five minutes" drive from the Lookout spot—he was far off on that one: try
more like 25. Maybe half of that drive was, again, on an unpaved, gravel road, this time with quite a lot of potholes that Matthew tried his best to drive around, but still shook me around so much that by the time we finally got back to Union to go out to dinner I was actually getting a little carsick.
In the meantime, though, getting out to that bridge across the water was totally worth it. I learned that Lake Cushman is a man-made lake, created by the construction of
Cushman Dam No. 1 (which we
stopped by on our way back) in 1926. Next year it will have been a hundred years ago! Jennifer said she went out to this lake a lot as a kid; Dad told me the same thing late this morning when I was visiting him. I can't remember ever having heard of it before this year, but you know, my memory. Dad even told me, "I must have taken you out there sometime when you were a kid," but I have no such memory.
As is typical of lakes created by dams, there are submerged cabins under the surface of the lake—an, plenty of old tree stumps from clearcutting that was done before the dam flooding occurred. There are spots where the stumps are
quite visible. Dad and I talked today about how fascinating it is that the stumps look as fresh as ever, rather than rotting over a hundred years like you might expect.
I had gotten to Jennifer and Matthew's house by about 4:30, and we loaded into Matthew's huge vehicle within minutes. None of the kids were there this weekend—Hope lives in Portland now and Chase and Ian are staying with Eric—so it was just Jennifer and Matthew and me. Between the drive there, the time there, and the drive back, we spent all of about two hours with Lake Cushman—and I got
21 great shots out of it (out of 58 total for my overnight visit with Jennifer and Matthew).
When we got back to Union, we went to the Mexican restaurant there called 2 Margaritas. The portions are huge and the food is delicious. I ordered a strawberry banana margarita which was okay (not enough banana flavor) and a mushroom & spinach quesadilla that was amazing. It was so amazing, in fact, that I stuffed myself silly just eating four out of the six slices cut into it. I knew the rest wouldn't keep well, so I chose not to box the rest, though I really wanted to. Fuck, that thing was delicious. I had eaten there with Jennifer before, but I did not remember the food being that incredible.
We sat outside briefly at first, but again it was in the shade and now it was nearing dusk. It got too chilly and we moved to a table inside.
We went back to the house, and Jennifer looked for a movie we could watch that we would not care that much about, during which she could scroll on her phone and I could process photos from the day. We settled on
The Money Pit starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long, which holds up surprisingly well for a mid-eighties comedy. We all laughed a pretty good amount.
Matthew made us all another cocktail. I said I'd prefer something with tequila since that was the liquor I had already had, and he made us all mango juice with tequila. I have no idea how much he put in it. It may not even have been that much, but as I also discussed with Dad and Sherri today—we've gotten too old to be able to throw back much anymore, and I did indeed wake up in the middle of the night, recognizably dehydrated. I went upstairs from the bed I was sleeping in in the basement, and poured myself a glass of water. When I got up this morning and Matthew made us breakfast burritos (simple and tasty, I should make it myself at home: flour tortillas; scrambled eggs; cream cheese; shredded cheese; there was also supposed to be salsa but Jennifer forgot to pull that out), she offered me a coconut water. I accepted, even though I'm not crazy about coconut water. But it helped me rehydrate.
We just sat and shot the shit for a while after breakfast, and then I was off driving to Olympia for my Birth Week 2025 afternoon with Dad. But that's for Day Three, and I'll write and post about that tomorrow, okay? Okay!
[posted 8:54 pm]
