Danielle put away\nthe frozen food and turned on the baseboard heater. She read the nice\ncard from the rental’s owners and the invitation to leave a little\nnote in the guest journal. She perused the library and board game\nselections\u2014all classics. As for the puzzles, there were enough to\nentertain a medium size penitentiary, and all of them Pacific\nNorthwest-themed. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The kids just sat\non the couch and stared at their mother until she showed them the\nbedroom they all<\/em> would share, the one with bunk beds. They\ndidn’t know what to make of bunk beds. They’d never seen one before.\nFinally, the girl climbed up one the ladders and pounced on the bed.\nShe giggled and put her feet up, touched the ceiling with her shoes,\nand giggled again. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cabin warmed up\nwith the baseboard heater. A fire in the wood stove was out of the\nquestion. Even though the owner had built a perfect starter inside,\nand left precise directions how to open the flue, start and maintain\nthe fire, and adjust the vents and fan, the act of starting a fire\nintimidated Danielle. She had never started one before, indoors or\noutdoors. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Danielle got a\npizza going in the oven, poured a mug of rose, the kids cracked the\ncans of energy drinks and they all looked at each other. Rain had\nbegun to fall with substantial volume so a beach walk was out. Maybe\nit would clear later. It was noon on the Oregon Coast and raining and\na family was trapped inside a cabin without any possibility of\nescaping to popular media. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course! It was\npuzzle time! \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Danielle set up a\ncard table near a large window with a view to the yard and fairway.\nThe boys set up chairs around the table. She told her daughter to\npick out a puzzle. The daughter said there were too many to pick\nfrom. Danielle told her to grab one at random. The girl grabbed a\ndust-covered box and dropped it on the table. It was a 1000-piece\npuzzle of Crater Lake. A 1000 pieces! That would take months!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the boys\nasked what was Crater Lake. Danielle was dumbfounded, but then again,\nshe’d never taken her children to Crater Lake. Disneyland was so much\nsplashier! Then Danielle realized she’d never visited Crater Lake.\nWhat kind of Oregonian was she? What kind of Oregon parent am I?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Danielle put away the frozen food and turned on the baseboard heater. She read the nice card from the rental’s owners and the invitation to leave a little note in the guest journal. She perused the library and board game selections\u2014all classics. As for the puzzles, there were enough to entertain a medium size penitentiary, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5787"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5790,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5787\/revisions\/5790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}