After a week on the East Coast, I’m back home in Seattle. It was a very up-and-down trip, during which I celebrated a friend’s wedding, and also my grandparents’ lives, saw lots of friends and family, and spent a whole lot of time in transit from one place to another. In my planning, I somehow had the foresight to fly back on Saturday evening, leaving myself a day to reacclimate to West Coast time, attitude and environs, and I’m thankful I did.

I spent the morning drinking awesome coffee (which, except for my brief stay with relocated Seattle friends in New York and a chance good americano in Boston, was sorely lacking all week) and wandering the Broadway Farmers Market with Drew.

[ Farmers market haul: an heirloom tomato, an onion, an eggplant, squash, spicy salad greens, pears, carrots, a jalapeno, short ribs, and lemon cucumbers. Not pictured: a tasty apricot pastry that disappeared quite quickly. ]

I love that I can wander a few blocks from my house to a farmers market where 35 different local producers will sell me a week’s worth of fruits and vegetables (along with meat, cheese, flowers, ice cream, bread, etc.), all happy/local/organic, of course, for a totally reasonable sum of money. I love that in the course of shopping, I’ll run into 5 or 10 people I know from the neighborhood, and I’ll probably meet a few more. I love that I usually get to make meals from these shopping trips with good friends who also live in the neighborhood, like I did tonight (the tomato and cucumbers were great with a little olive oil, salt and pepper). I love that the farmers market will go until December 20th this year.

That’s only a snippet of things I like about my life in Seattle right now, but as always, being on the East Coast does make me remember how much I miss it. Most of my family is there, and I left behind a lot of friends in Boston when I moved four years ago, not to mention all the ice cream (which I partook of liberally during my two days in Boston last week). I miss being close to my grandparents’ place in Connecticut, where time seems to slow down.

I’m still not sure exactly what I was looking for when I left in 2005, or if I’ve found it. I’m not feeling 100% settled right now, but I do know I’m in a good place surrounded by good people, and one way or another, I’ll figure it out.