Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

I drove down to Tacoma to spend last night at the Tickler's new place. I came prepared to do all kinds of naughty things. TL;DR: naughty things didn't happen.

But what did happen? A whole lot of kitty pettin'. No, that's not dirty: the Tickler got a couple of kittens when she moved in back in June, two male litter mates. Aloysius is grey, striped, and shy; Speck the runt is a fearless and outgoing jet-black hunter. We spent hours enjoying kittyvision.

We also spent a whole lot of time sleeping: I conked out at 2200 yesterday and woke up around 0600 today. The Tickler was shifted about three hours later. The odd thing about this to me is that the first night we were in Long Beach, something similar happened. We have resolved next time to either do our naughty business earlier in the day or just have a longer date. The latter wasn't possible today because I had Stuff To Do.

But what of Tacoma itself? The neighborhood that the Tickler lives in reminds me a lot of Seattle's northernmost and southernmost ends: no curbs, people of color, some bars on windows and doors. But if that neighborhood were in Seattle, a noticeable percentage of the houses would have been either remodeled or replaced; I saw no evidence of that in Tacoma. And the streets would have been narrower and more crowded.

And the house? Built in the 1950s, popcorn ceilings, kitsch woodwork like I've never seen before, but painted in more tasteful colors by the Tickler. There's a sizable covered porch that, if screened in, would be perfect for a certain kind of naughty party because the ceiling is higher than the usual eight feet. But the real splendor of the house is its garden: raised beds, fruit trees, a sprinkler system, tiger lilies that bloomed in waves all summer, the works. The former owners were an elderly couple from Vietnam, and at least one of them was an avid gardener. As Murphy's Law dictates, the Tickler is not, but she wants to find somebody who is for some small-scale sharecropping. It seems a shame to let that go to waste.

True to form the Tickler has found the largest concentration of restaurants in the area. After a romantic drive to see parts of the city that I hadn't, we had some weirdly large but tasty portions of takeout from Indo Street.

So yes, I can't wait to go down there again, and maybe next time stay awake.