Adulting for Adults

bureaucracy, banh mi, biking, and breakfast of champions

Morning yoga

My friend D uses the term “adulting” to describe days devoted to the myriad of bureaucratic, medical, and housekeeping tasks necessary to keep life running smoothly. D lives in Portugal, where I’m told the bureaucracy can try one’s patience, though I like this recent interpretation of it by

Nancy Whiteman

, who has come to appreciate the “presentness” she experiences when it’s finally her turn in the queue. To quote my new favorite phrase (which you’ve heard me use before - thank you,

Oldster Magazine

and

Maggie Smith

), “that’s not nothing.”

D prepares for each bureaucratic expedition with care — book, water, snacks. She plans to settle in for the day and is pleasantly surprised if things go more quickly than anticipated. If you’ve ever tried the psychology-based weight-loss program Noom, you’ll recognize this as “habit bundling.” Pair an unpleasant task (renewing your drivers license, riding your exercise bike - with a pleasant one - reading a book in the waiting room, watching Schitt’s Creek) and you’re more likely to achieve your goals.

(As the mother of daughters in their early 20’s, I became familiar with the term “adulting” through the many books that came out as my kids were launching. Apparently, our generation of helicopter parents has not adequately prepared Gen Z to figure out the basic aspects of adult life. Or, as we’ve learned over the years, parental guilt-tripping sells books).

I returned from my month in Portugal committed to my own version of “adulting,” in preparation for our eventual move. I’ve already told you about the deliberate and bittersweet process of decluttering. Recently, I dove into the tedious process of getting my documents in order, something that’s actually pretty easy to do in the US, where most things can be accomplished online.

Portuguese bureaucracy seems to value consistency, so if one document shows your first and middle names, all documents need to show them. I proceeded, undaunted.

First up, drivers license. I’ve got a birthday coming up and mine appeared to need renewal. Glad I caught that in time, I unsuccessfully attempted to renew it online. No worries. Since I had to go in person to the licensing office, why not get an enhanced drivers license, something that our state has threatened to require, though they keep pushing the date back. (Anybody remember the looming changeover to the metric system, they kept threatening us with as kids in the early ‘70s? Still waiting).

Image from https://www.chisholm-poster.com/posters.

I didn’t need to “habit bundle” because things moved swiftly at the licensing office. When it was my turn, I had the clerk’s full attention. After completing the registration and getting my picture taken, I was charged a whopping $4 for the new RFID license. Why so cheap, I asked? Because my original license wasn’t due to expire till September of 2024, so the new one is only good for a year. I will have to renew it again next year.

Yesterday, my new license arrived. Guess what it doesn’t have. My middle name (which my old one had and so do all our other key documents). Apparently the enhanced drivers licenses have so much info, there is no room for middle names.

This adulting thing is harder than it looks.

Next up - marriage certificate.

J is very organized and he was sure ours was in our file cabinet, but I couldn’t find it. No big deal. I got online and searched the King County online records database for our 1996 document. Weird - when I searched using my name, I found our marriage application, but no marriage certificate. Did we forget some essential step?

Turns out, my name is misspelled on our marriage certificate (but correct on the application), so for 27 years J has been married to the wrong woman.

After a very long wait on hold, I spoke to someone in the records office with a wicked sense of humor. “Run, while you can,” he said. And then, as he was taking down my address so he could mail me certified copies of the corrected marriage certificate, he joked about putting my misspelled name on the envelope, just to add some suspense as I opened it.

image from the movie Office Space.

Whatever gets you through the day, dude.

We recently spent a pleasant week with our friends C and G at the Columbia River Gorge. For over 20 years we have rented a house on a cherry orchard, belonging to a retired university professor and his retired school teacher wife. They were roughly the age we are now when we met them and they were paragons of adulting, not to mention offering an inspiring blueprint for the latter half of midlife and beyond. The property required constant attention and they were constantly and happily working together on the land or the buildings. In the off-season they were ski instructors in Sun Valley.

Their bookcases were filled with wonderful books to share (hence my reference to “Gorge” books) and they were filled with stories.

In June 2022 L, the wife, passed away, and her husband D followed this past May. The day after D died, their beloved black Lab Max also passed. We miss them very much.

We returned to the property and, instead of staying in the small pool house we’d always rented, we were offered the main house. When we arrived, my dog immediately went looking for L, D, and his frenemy Max, who usually bounded over to our car to greet us. That was bittersweet. So was seeing small reminders of them — a container marked “flour” in L’s handwriting, her cookbooks, including the one that introduced me to Dutch Babies, now a family favorite, and the retractable pool cover that D was forever fixing.

C and G are great travel companions and we fell into an easy rhythm with them and visiting and local friends. J and G got to be “wind pigs.” Meanwhile, C and I….

I have admired my friend C for many years. She would make a great Portuguese bureaucrat, because she gives you her undivided attention. She is also very disciplined and has this adulting thing down.

Each morning she gets up and does yoga and then eats a healthy breakfast of steel cut oats. Then, she hops on her bike for an efficient heart-rate raising ride. Later, there may be Pilates. In between she works, recreates, and socializes and makes this balancing act seem effortless and joyful.

View from the Mosier Twin Tunnels trail. Worth the climb.

I decided to follow C’s lead and use my time with her as a reset, since my own disciplined healthy habits have slipped since gallivanting in Portugal. All week, I got up and did yoga (though not until G, bless his heart, had made a pot of coffee). I ate steel cut oats. I jumped on the janky free bike I inherited and rode with her in the 100 degree heat on the hilly and spectacular trail overlooking the Columbia River. I did Pilates with her. We took a windy hike.

On the way back to Seattle, J and I stopped at a taco truck and got adobada burritos to eat on the road. After all that clean living, that burrito was a shock, albeit a delicious one, to my system. YOLO.

Now I’m home, and without C or D to inspire me, I have to rely on habit bundling to achieve adulting. I leave you now to go off on a run, while listening to the audio version of Mink River (coincidentally read by someone I used to know. I am continually amazed at how small the world can be). It was one of my “Gorge books” and gives you the flavor of the Pacific Northwest. The other, which I highly recommend, is God’s Hotel: a Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine.

The best thing I cooked last week

Many years ago, before the plethora of Internet recipes, I created seasonal notebooks to save recipes I had clipped from food magazines. Even though it’s no longer necessary, I always bring my Summer notebook to the Gorge.

My older daughter, an expert sandwich maker, has become obsessed with banh mi, the delicious Vietnamese sandwich that features flavorful meat and pickled vegetables. She regularly pickles daikon, so she is banh mi ready at all times.

If that’s not adulting, I don’t know what is. I must have done something right.

In my notebook, I found these forgotten recipes for Grilled Chicken Banh Mi and Vietnamese Chicken Salad (made from the leftover grilled chicken) from the June 2008 issue of Food and Wine magazine.

If you are banh mi-curious, I highly recommend you follow

Andrea Nguyen

(who writes about more than just banh mi) on Substack. I love her Banh Mi Handbook and so does my daughter.

I was pretty proud of myself for having the wherewith-all to marinate the chicken the night before we hit the road and have my supply of pickled carrots and daikon and a baguette at the ready. After a long drive and J’s first wingfoiling session of a very hot, but windy week, we enjoyed banh mi at sunset. The refreshing salad fortified us in the hot days ahead, including on a paddle board excursion across the Columbia with our intrepid dog.

That’s certainly not nothing.