where is home where is love

BSP was away for a few weeks (did you miss me?), back in the PNW for family, friends, work, and even a bit of sixty degree days and rain.
I'd wondered how I'd feel about visiting the city I've called home for so many years and I'll give it a mixed review. Seattle is gorgeous and progressive and some things are easier.
I bought cosmic crisp apples so enormous and crisp and delicious I nearly wept.
The morning and evening breezes are still cool and briny.
But I got harassed on a couple of occasions, a man getting off a bus falling into a crosswalk at my feet, another sucking his teeth and saying I was delicious. A man took off his shoes and lay on the sidewalk screaming next to my open car window one afternoon.
Seeing family was wonderful, two nieces and my sister and her husband dined at a Vietnamese restaurant my nieces have loved for years, had bubble tea and hit the Dearborn Goodwill.
We lost a beloved elder dog, my sister's rescue, a sweet, slightly cranky alpha who herded us and protected my youngest niece.
One sister braved a cross-border bus trip to see me; the other generously lent me a vehicle and went to Barbie even as she grieved her pup, and got me to my airport ride.
I saw wonderful friends, drank tequila on a rooftop with dear women, sharing laughs and a few tears; a writer friend helped me at my cabin, another dear friend meeting us there to get key codes and share delicious blueberries. One of my oldest friends met me for drinks one evening, coffee another morning, and we confided our Gen X weariness with the world, laughing and promising to meet again soon.
The final weekend was a blur of my partner's family, a show with a friend (where a lead singer berated the audience, Seattle-style, for not knowing a song), a drag brunch, and a milestone birthday, where good pals gathered to laugh and sip cocktails and eat cake and celebrate our friend and each other. A road-tripping friend allowed me to stay in her apartment those last few nights and I gazed at Mount Rainier each morning and evening, hardly believing my luck.
That is, until the final night when a carful of drunk women parked outside the balcony and got into a yelling match, carrying on so long that the police came, blue lights blipping, the dark parking lot illuminated with flashlights and opening and closing car doors.
Peace, Seattle.