As Good As It Gets

Meeting the baby brother and his wife, a hike in Mount Rainier, treated to no rains, a surprise advance birthday gift (one night in a log cabin in the mountains), catching up with ex roomie and her little one.

End result: Alpha is a happy individual.

When friends asked me how my trip to Seattle was, all I had to say to the was ‘It was perfect and wonderful.’ No crazy stories, no freak incidents, not even one instance of me flushing my cell phone. Yes folks, I regret to inform you that this post will only contain happiness and mush, contentment and good vibes. Seeya later.

Rationale (SIL), I know you might be still reading. So here goes- Baby brother, Beta, sent me ticket to Seattle, but Pi happily tagged along. Oh, this post was supposed to be nice. Habit is hard to break. Yeah, so we reached Seattle and ooh-aahed over brother’s new house done up superbly. The couple gave credit to each other. It was hard to believe my brother would have such great taste, but then you’ve got to give it to Rationale to be so benevolent. There are more instances where Rationale shone above the rest. Read last bit of this post for details.

Mount Rainier, the breathtakingly lovely volcanic peak (14410 ft above sea level) that can be seen by commuters in Seattle was a treat to my mountain starved midwestern eye.
We hiked there. Clear skies… much more than we could ask for in Seattle. Even the hardcore Seattle people couldn’t stop exclaiming on how beautiful the day was.

‘Look look, Mt Rainier’ for the 12th time en-route Rationale would jump up and down in the car.

‘Yes, I notice.’ I hadn’t stopped noticing. It’s hard to tear your eyes away from it.

‘WOW! Isn’t is so pretty?! Tsk tsk! Woah! You can see it still!! You guys are so lucky its not cloudy today.’ My brother exclaimed.

‘Can you belive how lucky you are?!’ the same brother added in the same journey in the same hour.

At this point I was beginning to feel that it was probably their first time seeing the mountain too. Maybe I ought not to feel that jealous.


Our hike was quite pleasurable. There was snow all over and we had to hike on melting snow. Going up was slightly better than walking on quicksand and coming down was better than ice-skating with no experience. It was like ice-skating with very little experience. The sights were beautiful and even though the ice covered mountain gave us cold stares, we never felt more welcome. We sat on vocanic ash, dipped our feet in gushing streams and slid on ice. Stayed overnight at a log cabin that was a birthday surprise for me. I really had no clue. I was overwhelmed, so I invited the others to stay with me too. I cut the yummy birthday cake that was snuck into the fridge somehow. My birthday is not till much later, so hold your horses on the cheap age jokes. I guess Pi wanted to get done with my birthday stress as soon as possible. It was nothing but touching.

The owners of this cabin had an eclectic sense of style. There was a scary owl staring at us in the loo that gave Pi some constipation issues. Rationale counted 37 hearts in the bathroom itself in various forms and shapes. Then there was a framed picture of a nude woman in the bedroom. Pi was convinced that it is the owner’s girlfriend. We didn’t explore the theory further as we were dead tired and slept in the middle of the movie -As Good As It Gets. No one other than Beta had seen the movie before. My brother claimed to have seen it three times, each time not knowing he had seen it the previous time. He told us that after watching it with us for an hour.

Pi’s new company wanted a picture of him for his portfolio. So he pained me immensely to take headshots of him in various locales. A few hundred pictures and boatloads of patient sighs later, he breaks the news that the company may prefer him in semi formals and not T-shirts. I decided to retire from taking pictures for life. That’s when Beta and Rationale came to my rescue; rummaging cupboards, ironing shirts, dressing him up and taking him to well lit areas for the photo shoot. Pi basked in all the attention, getting pictures taken and rejecting them. ‘Look my eyes look tired in this. My smile looks funny here. Yikes, my hair looks oily. My pimple looks like a freakin pimple.. so on.’

That is when my brother lost it. ‘Someone remind him the photos don’t lie.’

So Rationale was the only one left with the onus of being nice to Pi. She did manage to finally get a picture that he seemed to like. Photo number 1289. He brought it to us and asked, ‘Whatdya think guys?’

‘Yes!’ in chorus we yelled.

Today I saw the portfolio and I think the other photo was much better. The number 809.