the Beeb the Beagle & my Best Friend

Updates!

2011-09-16T12:34:00.000-07:00

Geneaology Bug et al

2010-06-22T15:08:00.000-07:00

Mushrooming @ the Simpson Place

2010-06-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

It's been such a fun year.

2010-06-22T11:45:00.001-07:00

Living

2010-06-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

The Eagle Cam

2010-03-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

It's a quite a while since my last post. Real life, crafting, travel and Facebook have my attention these days. Topics to write about haven't been thick on the ground for me either. So, that said, I have a topic to share. The Eagles are back.

Cascade & Lady Odell returned to the nest on March 25th and promptly deposited an egg. The weater took a turn for the worst in the past few days but they are sticking with it. I've set up a fan page on Facebook @ www.facebook.com/EagleCam and the link to the live cam is there as well as daily pics from the nest. People who watch the nest and have observations to share are encouraged to do so.

I spend more time on Ravelry talking about crafts than sharing here and frankly more time talking about timely issues with folks and friends on ol Facebook. My discussions may come around occasionally to the blog but don't look for me regularly. The open journal format is losing its charm.

ciao

Hood River Harvest Festival -- Rob, Tory, Dawn & I

2009-10-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

t’s been months since I wrote a full sized entry in this blog. I’ve had different priorities lately and it hasn’t been to update this area. This morning, however, I was updating my Facebook page and the entry for yesterday’s adventure was just too many darn characters for the format no matter how much I paraphrased. So here I am returning to the format that lets me tell the tale in full and share just how much FUN we had yesterday in North Central Oregon.

5 AM. Breakfast

Tory & Dawn (hard fast fabulous friend duo) arrived at the house at O’dark early. Tory had worked til well after midnight the night before and here he was with his best gal after only half a night of sleep. My Man-O got right on pouring a couple cups of strong rich dark coffee all around while I prepared a hearty bit of breakfast. While we ate and loaded up on caffeine, we that days trip was discussed in general, with very few specifics named, only that as a group we were going up to the Gorge, explore, eat, laugh and have fun. The guys planned a trip to the Brewery, the gals planned a walk up and down Oak St to see the shops, the group planned to visit a few orchards for some fruit to bring home and to stop in at the Harvest Festival on the waterfront to see even more farm fresh goods and artisan products.

7 AM. Leaving Central Oregon

We were off, the sky was overcast and the day called for some pretty good rain showers, but not a drop fell from the dawn sky. The drive from Bend through Madras is something we’ve all done so very often that I can’t claim the scenery was much paid attention too – the sky was amazing and the mountains painted in white, pink and blue were a sight to behold - - but good conversation took over the majority of our attention. Our chosen route was to go up thru Madras, up to Government Camp (on Hood) and hook a right on to Highway 35 and go up through Odell. I hadn’t been this way in more years than I care to recall, if ever, and the country-side was attention grabbing. It seems to me that there is a distinct line between the high desert and the green lush land that you cross into when you head up to Odell, from the sage & bitterbrush to ferns & bramble thorn, High Desert Sage Rat that I am, the dive into a green world is a geo-shock that I particularly enjoy. I love my desert. There is truly no place like home, but to dip into that lush greenery is a treat that just can’t be described by me into words that would sound as sensorially sensuous as it really is.

9 AM. Rasmussen Farms

Rasmussen Farms in Odell is back off the main highway a few miles and is deep-deep-deep back into orchards of so many varieties that I lost count just a mile in. The rain had started to fall in a soft mist, and the pumpkins were brilliant spots of color against the grey-green orchards. A pair of Newfoundland’s, the size of small ponies, thought briefly about trying to eat the truck as we made our way first past the farm entrance and then again on our way back when we finally figure out that yes, that one little hand painted sign really was the only hint on how to enter the farm proper.

The farm was a fun place, filled with more harvested produce than I regularly see at the local grocery store. 15 apple varietals, 6 or 8 pear varietals, cauliflower, cabbages, kale, Brussels sprouts, pumpkins, acorn squash, butternut squash, gourds and mini pumpkins of all shapes and sizes (ever seen grown men make faces that indicate they remember what it was to be evil 10 yr old boys with a big fat desire to make obscene suggestions with vegetables???); filberts by the hundred weight, chestnuts, walnuts, almonds – onions, garlic, corn . . . oh honey the list just goes on and on. It was a FUN place to wander and touch and taste and smell and see.

I loaded up on Apples and Pears oh my! I’ll be making apple chutney and pear chutney and spiced fried apples and apply pie very very soon!

10 AM. Oak St. Harvest Fest on Frontage. Full Sail Brewery on Columbia

Hood River and the sun was shining down on Oak Street. The Harvest Festival also included a 10k run, The Providence Harvest Dash, and we were dodging many tired sweaty runners as we got another cuppa coffee. As a group we are people watchers. It’s a nifty pastime, easy to practice and frequently yields something interesting about humanity that you hadn’t considered in quite that light before. Be it how someone dresses, walks, speaks, interacts with the world around them. We had talked about walking around town and indulging in good conversation and a observing our fellow inhabitants & tourists. With a couple of exceptions, I can state honestly I didn’t pay much attention to people yesterday. I was seeing a LOT of dogs. More newfies, mastiffs, malamutes, bull dogs, pugs, boxers, golden retrievers, schnauzers, terriers, labs, poodles and more. It was a day for canine companionship. We moseyed and meandered and wandered down to the waterfront. Several runners in rather nifty costumes provided Halloween preview – everything from Bumblebees to a Violent Purple Pimped-out Joker. There is a good sized park right down on the river and there were pavilions spread across a few acres of grass holding perhaps 200 artisan and food vendors hawking their wares. More orchard farms were represented at the festival and we saw even more varieties of fruit and vegetables that made us stop and scratch our heads in wonder. Apples as large as a toddlers head. I held a single apple in my hand that weighed in at 5 lbs and could have been a pie all on its own. There were apples and pears of extreme size and pumpkins too. There were garlic vendors that make so many different types of pickled garlic that I wondered at the imagination that came up with some these recipes. I saw sweet peppers in a rainbow of colors and fat poblanos that begged to be tomorrow night’s supper.

It was a bit of a climb from Frontage back up to Columbia Street. Hood River is a very hilly place. Not as steep as Astoria by-gory, but the residents do all have wonderfully strong calves, today as I walk to and from the coffee pot I can tell you by way of the ache in my calves just how steep a climb those streets near the river are. Columbia Street is the home of the Full Sail Brewery, our lunch destination. We started out on the patio to eat but the clouds came rolling in swiftly, black and heavy with fat, cold rain. The populated and popular patio emptied out 10 minutes before the rain started and there was a dining room wide sigh when the water started pelting the windows while we watched.

The food was fabulous. I had the Cuban Panini – the guys went for the Rogue River Blue Cheese burgers and Dawn had Chicken Skewers, we at largely and enjoyed it very much. Another walk back to the truck, up a few more steep streets and we split off into pairs, the guys to head back to the brewery for the tour and we gals to window shop.

12 PM. Oak St.

The rain wasn’t pouring down as hard as it had during our lunch but the water still falling from the sky and the air was warm pretty soon there was a blonde and a red-head from drier climes complaining about hair frizzies. I made Knot Another Hat my priority first stop and fell in love. The shop is on the second floor of an old building at #16 Oak St. the shopkeeper has a large picture glass window looking out at the Columbia with a couple of couches and overstuffed chairs positioned for yarnsters to sit and watch the water and ply our fingers at our craft. She also has very nice selection of fibers. It’s not as large a selection as say, Juniper Fiberworks & Gossamer, here in Bend, but it definitely rivals Bend shops prices, in many cases by up to 2 dollars a skein. That is significant in yarn. I’ll make another quick plug for this shop, she has a website and orders over $50 are free shipping. I do believe I have a new source for fiber. (insert blissful sigh here) I picked up a few more skeins for my stash and also was finally and happily able to purchase the Brittany Birch cable needles that I’ve wanted since I first found out about them this summer up in Sisters.

I also purchased another nifty wood crochet hook (size H) for my growing collection of artisan wood hooks. I had taught Dawn to crochet a year or two ago but she had found it not to her liking, the nature of the hand motions exacerbating a not fun bit of tendonitis, but knitting, with large needles, and the scrumptious variety of yarns called to her and she found a nifty fiber to make a scarf from. We planned to do a spot of knitting on the drive up to Multnomah Falls. We headed back out into the rain and crowded sidewalks, (‘Rain? What rain?) into the presses of people with wet dogs and umbrellas or rain slickers or shirt sleeves. I couldn’t tell you which were the locals and which were day trippers like us. We poked into a Doggie Shop, browsed through my favorite little bead shop and yakked a bit with the owner, talked about gelato but finally decided on hitting the candy shoppe when we met back up with the guys.

Tory & I bought licorice and found a new variety in that heavenly genre to enjoy and Dawn and Rob found peanut butter fudge w/ double chocolate is indeed worth writing home about. Back into the pickup we all loaded to head on down I-84 to see even more water falling out of the sky – the 3 waterfalls along the scenic highway.

2:30 PM Horsetail Falls

The rain got heavier and came down harder as we made our way west down the interstate, the traffic was racing, way to close for my comfort, so I ignored it utterly and turned to Dawn and we got down to the business of casting on. I had my current project in my basket and relaxed into it while she practiced this first skill. In nearly no time at all we were off the freeway and onto the scenic highway and it’s treasury of natural wonders. Dawn got out her camera rig and oohh baby is that some?! Woman is serious about her pictures and set off to snap about a zillion. The guys strolled around the base of Horsetail falls, being good and impressed by the rushing weight of water from a 150 ft drop and I looked at the leaves, and moss and lichen and ferns and the people I love having a great time. I brought home a significant lump of moss that was lying in the road --- I have to believe that the winds and heavy rains knocked this bit loose from a tree, much of the bark it had anchored itself to is still attached to the root system --- and I plan to make a terrarium or two from this fun find.

3:00 PM – Multnomah Falls

On down the road just a couple of miles are Multnomah Falls. Of all the waterfalls in the northwest this is probably the most iconic. Neither Tory nor Dawn had ever been and while Rob and I had been, many times, it was fun to experience it again through eyes that had never stood in the mist of that most wonderful double fall of cascading water. Out came Dawn’s camera and Rob and I exchanged a look, knowing full well that those two would make the hike up to bridge that spans the cleft right at the bottom of the larger, more impressive Upper Falls. We looked back at the lodge, and looked up at the rain falling down and felt the chill in the air that had finally come to make the rain more autumnal and less Indian summer and found that the best way to spend such an afternoon is indoors, before a nice fire in a 90 yr old lodge, sipping cream heavy dark coffee and sharing a huckleberry topped buttery shortbread. We had a very lovely, quiet visit, my best friend and I, drying our jackets by the fire, looking up 2 foot thick solid beams and thinking of the time when the lodge was built . . . daydreaming away the afternoon.

4:30 PM – Vista House Observatory

The last stop on the Scenic highway was the Observatory @ Crown Point. That too is a unique site that affords views of the Columbia that, no matter the weather, make awesome postcard fodder. Vista House was open for visitors and Rob was tickled pink, he’d never been inside as the first and last time we had ventured up the Observatory had been close for renovation. Inside the rotunda around each section of the observatory is a bust of a different native face. There are 12 of them in gold gilt, each a different man, looking out on days long gone. Grave faces. It’s a melancholy thing to look on for me. The stained glass sections above the window panes are in greens and golds and seemed to me to be the perfect colours for a autumn afternoon. The sun had come back out and was shining through the remaining shreds of black clouds and I was warm again. Rob and I perched upon the stone wall and watched the river and looked out across to Washington, and the farms on the high tops of the gorge, their leaves turning in rich reds and cheery oranges and yellows. Sadly we did not get to mount to the second story and appreciate the views from the heights, the Gallery was closed again however as the fall storms had exposed a nasty leak that needed repair. We may just have to venture back up there next weekend for another look.

6 PM -- Dinner 3 Rivers Grill

Back to Hood River as the sun sank down behind us – the rain was gone and the stars could be spotted in cloud breaks – and we as a whole were quite ready for a good meal and a little more good conversation before the trip home. We had initially planned to head over to Brian’s Pourhouse for dinner. On arrival, we found that Saturday nights really do recommend a reservation but the hostess was sure she could seat us in an half hour if we would care to wait down stairs in the bar and have a drink first. I really don’t know how the other three felt but I have to tell you that when I looked around that very crowded dark little dining room I wasn’t thrilled. Downstairs in the ‘Bar’ wasn’t much better. There was a crowd of perhaps 15 women pushing the only three tables in the place together and also pulling out all the chairs to seat around the tables . . . we did manage find 4 chairs to push back to the bar a but as we were sitting down the bartender let us know it would be quite a while as he had the ladies party to tend to first. Yup. I was done. Small renovated basement room-cum-bar loaded with 20-somethings being very loud before they had even been served their first round and a bartender that looks like he’d rather be home than there serving said gaggle of women much less our small party and I was ready to find another place to dine.

We left.

Across the street and on the corner sits a tall mosaic retaining wall. Atop that wall is a very nice outdoor patio with fairy lights strung to and fro across the outdoor dining area and inside was the lovely soft light of many candles. That is the place of scrumptious dining known as 3 Rivers Grill. Rob and I had eaten a wonderful lunch there last spring and as a group we were going to enjoy that lovely ambience and great food for dinner. We again had a great meal, they guys choosing their Rib Eye and we gals choosing tuna & bourbon chicken respectively. We talked, we laughed, we shared bites of this and that, we looked at the night and listened to the hum of the dining room full of people enjoying a very good dinner and we laughed and ate and drank some more. 3 Rivers Grill is cozy tables but plenty of room between you and your neighbors that you have your own conversations without hearing theirs. I deeply appreciate that. The tables are covered in white linen clothes with a big square of butcher paper across the top, as white and crisp as the linens. The beer was Deschutes, our fella’s favorite go-to beer, especially with good steak, and the pinot gris was cold and crisp on my tongue; perfect with grilled chicken and summer squash and zucchini. Rosemary bread and a fat merry little pot of butter made its way around the table a few times and very well cleaned plates met our waitress when she brought our check. Excellent price for the meal. Excellent.

8 PM – Headed home

A two hour drive back home, being quiet, being talkative, watching Dawn sleep, her head lolling gently with the bumps in the road, Rob leaning back against my hand when I touched his curls, thick and riled from the humid Gorge weather, Tory driving fast and sure down the road, as ready to be home as he was eager to head out 15 hours ago. Me, watching the stars and feeling how heavy my eye lids were and counting back over all the fun we had and we had seen and tasted and touched . . . it was a damn good day.

Hobo Taters w/ Country Ham

12 baby red potatoes, sliced ¼ thick

1 red onion, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

2 thick ham steaks cubed

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon rubbed sage

Salt & Pepper to taste

Heat oil in large (12 inch) skillet and add potatoes. Season. After four or so minutes turn potatoes for first time and toss in onions. Another 4-5 minutes and the next turn of skillet contents, toss in peppers, and on the next turn (also 4-5 minutes in) add the ham. An addition 2-3 turns (again of 4 or so minutes each) and your taters are done! Serve with eggs over-easy and caraway rye toast and good dark Sumatra roast coffee with lots of fresh cream.

Still on Hiatus . . .

2009-09-15T07:19:00.000-07:00

Look for me after the equinox . . .

Ripe Red Strawberries on top of Grizzly Mountain

2009-07-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

We hopped in the Scooby yesterday and took off for parts generally unknown for a day. We sorta planned to end up in Prineville, have lunch then decide what direction to head off in after lunch.

It was hot early yesterday; almost hot enough to make it worth burning the gasoline to run the A/C in the car. Kate and I sucked it up, put our hair in pony-ties and went with 4/55 (or 65) A/C. Rob, looked at us askance and with tongue in cheek occasionally asked if his hair was mussed.

About 5 or so years ago ODOT cut a new length of road between Millican and Prineville. I hadn’t driven it before. It wasn’t too bad, a nice scenic trip around the backside of Powell Butte. It’s only advantage that I could see is the ease of access it allows Crook County to the OHV trails over by Millican and down into Christmas Valley. I don’t necessarily agree that this is a good thing.

Prineville was Prineville on a hot Sunday afternoon. We toodled around the town looking for someplace cool to eat that wasn’t fast food or too big a meal. I finally gave up and said, “Let’s just go to Graff’s, it may be fattening but the ice tea will be cold and perfect and the place is comfy” Rob reminded me that Barr’s had closed sometime ago and that was not an option. Kate and I both wondered what had taken its place and decided to head that way anyway. We came around the corner onto Main St and looked at the building that had once housed Barr Graff’s Café and found a building remade with a Mexican façade and painted adobe orange. We all started laughing but it was Rob who said, “Mazatlan! Of course it is!” In case you were unaware, Mazatlan is our favorite go-to restaurant in Central Oregon.

We had an excellent lunch, as always.

When we walked back out into the noon day sun it was blistering hot. We longed for cool air and decided a drive up into the mountains was the answer. The drive was long and slow and sweetly spent. We chatted, we teased, we laughed; we wondered at the sights and smells and the things we saw.

From the top you could see both East and West – the Cascades, white crowned even in July but through the heat haze appearing distant and pale; the Ochoco’s, darkest blues and deepest greens, rolling down and down, undulating across the horizon, old-old rock that from a distance to me seems a sleeping giant. Gorgeous.

We stopped several times to snap photos and to stretch our legs. We saw summer range cattle lazing away the day in the sun and shade. We saw butterflies walking daintily across bright purple flowers. We saw young brook trout in a creek covered with shade and wild flowers. Columbine, lupine, monkshood, daisies, yarrow, larkspur, deer horn, oyster, old man thistles and common purple thistle, mullein, skunk cabbage, nettles, sage brush, rabbit brush and so much more. I could spend a blog or three on wild flowers!

The treat of treats was after I turned back from taking shots of the monkshood. There at my feet was a tangle of wild strawberry vines, not so unusual, but the hints of bright red peeking out from under the leaves was a nice surprise. We enjoyed several of the sweet little darlings, enjoyed watching the birds swoop in and out of the little sunny hollow where the strawberries grew; it was the desert on top.

So far this summer . . .

2009-07-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

. . . I worked in the office, in a completely different department, learning their rhyme & reason, for 6 1/2 weeks.

. . . I've been to the doctor, twice!, for infections. Blech!

. . . I've been to the doctor once to be assured I'm still cancer-free. Yay!

. . . I've been on one vacation to the coast with my best friend and will return soon to share the adventure with our kids.

. . . I've delved into the top layer of family history and decided that this is a project best left for winter and less distractions.

. . . I've watched an egg hatch and an eaglet growing from an awkward grey fluff to a large stout-brown-black youth who is equally awkward.

. . . I've gladly turned over navigating government agencies for the welfare of my kiddo and his future to my loving man.

. . . I've watched my veggie starts become plants and nearly killed them several times because work has eaten SO much of my time.

. . . I've gotten glasses for the first time in my life.

. . . I haven't put away the crochet basket, instead making even more amigurumi's and bits.

. . . I've jumped back on the path to good health & exercise for the 3rd? time. I'm strapped down to it and holding on tight.

. . . I'm not in the mood to write about happenings as much at the moment, I'd rather just savor it to myself for a while longer.

An honest to goodness Treasure Chest

2009-06-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

My parents have slowly been going through my grandfather’s things. My last living connection to the ‘old west’ passed away on Yule, 2007. It’s been hard for my dad and his brothers to empty out the house and divvy up the history. Finally they decided to give most of it to me, the oldest granddaughter, the oldest grandchild, to document, make copies where applicable and pass it on to the others.

I was a pretty lucky kid when it comes to knowing my extended and generational family. When I was born both sets of grandparents were very much here and present in my life. We spent every weekend going back and forth between my mother’s folks and my father’s folks. I also got to know and spend a great deal of time with my dad’s mother’s parents – my great-grandparents. My folks come from a very small town in eastern Oregon called Mitchell. It’s about 70 miles further east of Prineville, just on the other side of the Ochoco’s. Mitchell and the towns/communities around it sprung up in the mid 1800’s as ranching communities with some agriculture and mining, but the area did a small ‘boom’ in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s for lumber as well. By the time my folks were born the communities were doing a slow die off, the children growing up, going away to school and not returning.

When I was born the town still had a population of 350, by the time I was 5 in 1974 that number had dropped to 300 and by the time I was 10 it was down to 250. It held steady at about 250 for most of my teen years and then began another decline in numbers as I myself went off to school. I never knew Mitchell as a boom town filled with hustle and bustle.

I heard stories of course, but it was very hard for me to imagine when the town I knew had more abandoned buildings than functional and filled ones and many of those buildings were simply gone, torn down or burned down and no longer part of the towns skeleton. The stories when they when they were told by great aunts and great-great-uncles with querulous voices and eyes faded to soft greys and light blues behind thick bifocal glasses made the itchy-to-move-to-keep-playing little girl long to escape to the apricot trees and the cherry trees to climb and get into mischief. A quarter in my pocket would burn through to my skin if I didn't run down the boardwalk right away and spend it on licorice at Nortons'!

I wish I had listened more and been impatient less. Now that I want to know, now that I need to know, I have to learn from what is here, in my hands. At last I can imagine it very clearly. I have my great-grandmothers letters and her brothers and sisters post cards and the catalogs she ordered from, the receipts she kept, the pictures she treasured and the school lessons and childhood mementoes she cherished from her own babes. I also have her mother’s things.

I have my great grandfather’s trunk, his letters and receipts and memories. I have a wealth of history and so many stories to tell that I’ll likely spend the next several years doing so. Each piece I pull out of the trunk, each picture, each memento, has a story to tell. I don’t know them all yet, but I’m going to find out.

What we saw there . . .

2009-05-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

Pelicans flying in a tight formation just above the breaking surf, scooping little fish and critters out of the crest of the waves; a bald eagle fishing in the bay where the seals were sunning themselves on the beach. A flock of herons, standing in a pond covered so deeply in lily-pads that their legs must have seemed another tendril from the plants; an egret walking the banks of the river, oh so slowly, oh so carefully placing each foot carefully into the water so as not to disturb his prey.

Cormorants perched on top of a huge craggy rock in the sea, the top so white from generations of bird excrement that their black bodies were easy to see, even several hundred yards out on a bright shining day; a waterfall, tucked into a crag of rock on a sea cliff, spilling down into the surging water below.

Another bald eagle, in a nest built on top of a trestle bridge above a busy highway; three bull elk grazing in the high grass on the protected side of the mouth of the Columbia River, the Jetty in the back ground with huge ships passing into the river and fishing boats making their way to and fro to the sea.

Blue and gold sparrows, nesting in the Battery, the empty rooms that held cannon shot and powder now home to brave parents defending their mud waddle nests stuck to the white washed walls from the invasive humans sight-seeing through their home. Brown squirrels eating barely ripe goose berries from bushes on the grounds of Fort Stevens, a military encampment built to protect the Oregon/Washington people from invasion from the British in the 1800’s.

Buildings erected before this territory was a state and shortly after. Glorious old facades that are kept freshly painted and in grand condition. Three herbal-crystal-belly-dance-pagan-hippy-nag champa-and-patchouli smelling shops in a row in one of the oldest towns in Oregon less than a block from six churches with graceful steeples and stained glass saints.

I tossed one star fish back into the sea, one crab that hadn’t yet become gull food; Rob skipped a flat stone 30 or so yards across the smooth flat sand to land back on the edge of the turning tide. I felt the sand between my toes, cold and wet and smooth. I felt the sand on the soles of my feet, hot and rough and scalding. I smelled the rain, and the salt, and the green verdant valley. I saw families laughing and carefree; moms and dads swinging babies between them as they walked on the beach; a homeless man walking carefully down the beach, dressed in beat up denim, carefully combing his hair and beard as he made his way to the back of a restaurant on the shore.

I stood in the shadow of two separate light houses in two different states that looked nearly the same and stood on the same sort of points, looking ever out to the sea; one is a gift shop, the other a truck full of Coast Guardsmen were taking readings and measurements of the horizon while the wind whipped around me and the ships went about their day.

I spent sweet time, timeless time, clockless time, uncounted and precious with my best friend.

You either love it or hate it.

2009-05-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

As I type this the beagle is at my feet saying “please, please, please” to me. When Pippin was puppy he had the unfortunate habit of whining to beg for something. Food, toy, walk – whatever it was, he’d do a loud whine and then a puppy yip if was really serious about it. I trained him to give a soft ‘whoof’ of air instead. If you ask him to mind his manners (typically when he’s very excited about something) he’ll sit down and ask please very sweetly. A soft whoof through his beagle lips is ever so much more appealing than a whining yipyip.

The reason he’s on his best behavior and asking mom so sweetly for attention is two-fold. First, I went off and left him with those rotten kids for 3 whole days! How could I?! Don’t I know that he’s the sweetest most loving boy in the world and no one –but no one—could ever care for him as well as mom?! And then the second reason; I brought home licorice from the coast. Beagle shaped black licorice candies. The rest of my family can’t stand the odor of black licorice much less the taste of it; so it’s rather a selfish and lovely treat for me to get. I get it all to myself. Mostly. Begging beagle eyes and soft whoofs and the long tendrils of dog drool leaking out the side of his lips testify quite clearly that my Pippin is as in love with the black-as-tar confection as I am.

We went into a shop on Broadway in Seaside Oregon called Palapa Beach, just a block down from the hotel. The proprietress – a lovely dimpled lady named Ginger – shared her wares with us for the better part of an hour. She sold a great many things you’d expect to find in a gift shop at the beach; lotions, jewelry, postcards, collectables but the eye catcher is a 30 foot long candy counter. Nearly every gift oriented shop on the beach sells salt water taffy. Go to the beach, you buy salt water taffy. The ocean and this traditional confection go hand in hand to most tourists. Not so of Ginger’s shop. That’s not to say she didn’t have taffy, she most certainly did, in a little stand with maybe 25 flavors. Ppphhht. Nothing to write home about. She sells it, one supposes, because it’s expected. It is not her specialty.

She has over 60, yes m’dears you read correctly, sixty (!) varieties of licorice. Salt licorice, strawberry licorice, caramel coated licorice, hard licorice, soft licorice, chewy tar licorice, Scottie dog licorice, bat licorice, chalk licorice, cinnamon and black licorice, big fat squares of oily strong licorice and of course the beagle shaped licorice. I nearly lost my mind sampling (she is quite the candy pusher, is Ginger, handing over bits and pieces of everything she has with a smile and “if you like this, you’ll just loooovee this”) and gave over to the special pleasure that is had from that minty first bite and then the rich, saliva inducing unique flavor that is licorice, whether it’s from licorice root, star anise, fennel – I don’t care, gimme black licorice!!

So I came home with a pound and a half of black licorice. It’ll likely take me months to get through it all, even sharing with Pippin. No one else will eat it (oh darn!) but even with my strong desire for that black gold I’ll go very lightly, tip toeing through the stash, make it last and savor every evil bite.

What we did there . . .

2009-05-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

So many stories to tell that it’ll take a month of Sundays to get through them all; and of course the real threat lies in the fact that I’ll probably forget half of it before I get it all written out, or everyday life will reassert its dominance in my thinking and the stories will slip to the sweet spots of memory.

That’s a self defeating prophecy right there.

Some of the stories to tell:

Down the road . . . and back again

2009-05-20T07:34:00.000-07:00

Going to the coast, a swift and fun trip to Seaside, with my bestfriend. 20 years ago it was the summer before I caught preggers with my oldest. I was still in college and summer break was something to look forward too. I took a trip down the coast then and stopped at every state park and view lookout. I took pictures of the sound and surf. I smelled the salt air and stood in the rain to watch the tide pound in. The tide on the Oregon Coast is not a gentle thing. It snarls and growls and rips at the rocks and sand. I remember the girl I was and how satisfying natures agression was to witness.

I'm looking forward to the seeing the sea but I don't think my eye will see it quite the same way.

Lazy Blogger: the BBB or a New Blog . .

2009-04-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

I'm a sporadic blogger and I cheat a lot. That being said (because stating the obvious is the perfect example of both cheating and being lazy) I'm contemplating moving my crochet/craft/jewelry bits off to their own blog. Couple of reasons for this, by combining all the bits together here I get all sorts of readers, but the most traffic is really attracted to the crafty bits rather than the mom of an autistic teenager, or one half of a great pair of bff's (heh Rob will roll his eyes over that one) or the mistress of a cantankerous beagle. The BBB is really about sundays with Rob and Pippin and listening to the radio --- or it was supposed to be.

I like to tackle or comment on all sorts of things -- but again the craft stuff is a big piece of me too and it happens a lot on Sundays. I'm not a web professional, I have no idea if it would be a wise idea or just be another albatross.

So! That said -- what do you think? New blog? Something specifically about yarning and crochet and amigurumi?

Eavesdropping on txting

2009-04-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

Rob says:

is there anything else you need from the store you brat?

Noni says:

erm -- a day off, a million bucks, some sanity . . .

Rob says:

fresh out of all of them, settle for a hug and the adoration of your children?

Noni says:

fine if i must

Spring Road Trip Part 2 Hood River

2009-04-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

When the photographer is the driver it makes for fewer trip pics but the memories are better than the pictures anyway.

We had originally planned to take some trips earlier in the month but due to illness, kids schedules, and weather the trips didn’t materialize until this past weekend. The Salem trip was down and dirty, fast over (mini breakdown midway) and fast back. Not the long leisurely weekend we had originally planned and have since moved out to mid May. Sunday came and we were without a girl child still (her BFF’s 16th birthday bash was this weekend) and JP was all road-tripped out. Rob and I had the day to go out and explore! Going to Salem had been JP’s choice, my choice was The Dalles/Hood River. I had to log in to work for an hour Sunday morning, do a little beta testing on an upgrade, and then we could motor on down the road.

We knew it was going to be nice, but the gorge is a windy place and we dressed for warm but windy. That turned out to be both good and bad – good that I was protected from the sun (I did forget the sunscreen) bad that I was a touch too warm most of the day. We drove up through Madras and the traffic was very light, heading down into Maupin I fully expected to see rafts on the river with the sun out and so bright and cheery – but the recession has hit that industry too, it appears. We stopped on the river at the city park – too much coffee before we left the house – and looked at the sun on the water, smelled spring (and livestock!) in the air and watched the hawks lazily spiral up into the bluer than blue sky.

Have you ever made that trip? You climb and climb until you get up on the ridge above the lower Deschutes then the zigs and zags down to the river, then you start climbing up and up again. Between Maupin and The Dalles is nearly an hour of driving up. When you reach the highest point of the drive it’s only 3000 ft elevation, still lower than Bend, but it feels like you’re very high indeed in the High Desert of CO.

Tighe Valley was as green as emeralds, the hay and alfalfa growing in the fields already lush and verdant. We made a lot of bad jokes about Dufur as we drove past. It’s so cliché that Oregon has a town called Dufur. You might be a redneck if . . .

Actually, we did drive into and through Dufur once – mebbe 5 years ago – and that is a sad little town. The agriculture around it appears to be stable and growing but the little town is dying from the inside out. New business doesn’t thrive around a population of 500 when travel is easy and a town of 15k is just 30 minutes away.

Driving into The Dalles it was wonderful to see the apple orchards all a bloom. My grandparents (great and grand) had orchards – but theirs were full sized trees allowed to grow as nature and their own inclinations took them. Huge and sprawling apricot trees, apple trees, pear trees and in the case of the plum ‘trees’ they were more like big sprawling bushes that sort of creeped over everything. The apple ladder that I used to climb as a child was 10 ft tall and I wasn’t allowed to climb the top rungs that would reach the ripest apples at the top of the tree. Up on the gorge the trees have been bonsaii’d to such a degree that they are these little dwarf trees that grow no higher than a man with a step ladder can reach. Each branch off the trunk is carefully pruned to such an extent that only one or two fruits are born per stem and each stem is the healthiest on the main branch/trunk. The trees, even in full bloom, look very sparse until the leaves have unfurled for the summer. I like The Dalles, it reminds me very much of eastern Oregon towns. A little town with a lot of history of sweat and hard work and tears to build a bustling outpost on the edge of the desert; it has a very practical sense of self. That wasn’t our destination though. Nope we were off to Hood River and Blossom Fest 2009.

I’ve mentioned before that my knee is shot, yes? Bone on bone when I walk on uneven ground. So what possessed me to tromp around on foot through the steep hills of Hood River old town?? I dunno, just stubborn I guess.

We parked not far from Full Sail Brewing and made a plan to go for the tour there in the afternoon but on the list first; lunch. We knew we wanted to sit in the sun and enjoy the spring heat and the blossomy fragrance of the air and watch people. The little place called 3 Rivers Grill seemed to fit all of those requirements nicely.

Rob ordered the lamb Schwarma and I had the curried chicken salad. The curry was sweet and light and absolutely no heat. Dammit. Not curry. More like turmeric and coriander chicken. Very pretty, very sweet, not at all what I expected. But the atmosphere was lovely, there were some really interesting people walking, talking, laughing, pontificating, whispering, jogging, climbing with obvious effort, and just sitting and soaking up the sun. Very nice lunch.

We shopped, I bought more beads for jewelry, admired the really clever open air shops (a lot of them have sliding glass doors that are floor to ceiling along their shop fronts? They slide open the whole front of the shop, very cool), people watched some more and took the tour of Full Sail.

Here’s a fun factoid about the northern Oregon border. A ton of people that work on this side of the river live in Washington state. Why do they live there and work here, do you ask? No property taxes in Washington; lower income tax in Oregon. Sneaky devils aren’t they? I thought of that for two reasons, one, Randy the tour guide at Full Sail commented on the inadvisability of a work place habit by saying ‘Labour & Industry would not approve’ and that is a very Washingtonian ting to say. Oregon doesn’t have a Division of L&I – we have SAIF, but because I work for a Washington based corporation myself, I know the term, L&I and recognized Randy for the Washington cross-over that he is. Two, I’ve been listening to a lot of OPB radio lately, that’s how we learned of the Blossom Fest to begin with, and they air a lot of Washington based news as well as Oregon. They talk as if events and politics in Washington matter to Oregonians. Not to Central/Eastern Oregonians, certainly, but to the Border folk like P-Town, Hood River, The Dalles, etcetera, it sure does.

We wandered around a bit more, then drove up into the Heights and admired the gorgeousness that is Mt Hood from the orchards around Hood River. Another interesting factoid; we saw several businesses that referenced Mt Hood and Mt Rainier, Double Mountain Brewing was one, but when you are actually in Hood River, you can only see the tip top bit of Rainier peaking over the ridges on the Washington side of the river.

We left town around 4 and headed back up I 84 but jumped off the exit at Mosier. I wanted to drive the old Highway again. The Scenic Gorge Hwy was built during the depression. Another FDR job booster to get families back on track. My grand dad Mark worked on that one too. The Lodge at Mt Hood and the Scenic Highway. It gives me a warm feeling to look at what his hands helped to create. We stopped a few places along the way, including the overlook at Memaloose.

Ack – there is a lot more to tell but I’m off to lunch now – we’ll have to pick up this thread later.

Amigurumi Bulldog

2009-04-20T10:33:00.000-07:00

I was challenged to create this one:

This guy was the model:

I found the pic that I modelled the dog on here.

Spring Road Trip Part 1

2009-04-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

Two days, two trips . . . so much fun. Here, on Monday morning sunburned and tired, I have to take the time to write about it.

A couple of months ago Rob asked our friend and mechanic/detective Tory to take a few days and help Rob give my old Scooby some much needed overhaulin’. Tory is the best Subaru mechanic around --- he’s actually a Deputy Sherriff, so shhhh, don’t spread it around about his other skills -- he says that was his ‘other life’. Anyway, the guys came to an agreement about time and place and a few weeks ago they did the deed.

Abby D (my car) now has a new clutch, new hoses, new seals, new water pump, new belts, new filters (including a fuel filter and wahoo! Isn’t that grand?!?), new distributor cap and the rest of the bits that make a ‘tune up’. I’m like Jeremy Clarkson, I know exactly enough about cars to get my ass in trouble. Thus, being the wise and retiring sort of girl I am, I left it to them and trusted it would be perfect.

I got my little Scooby-doo back in tip top shape; all of a sudden that machine went from a putt-putt to a Go-Devil! That’s rather a tickle-me-pink prospect because gas prices as you well know aren’t insane any longer. The past two weeks we’ve taken the old girl out to stretch her legs and it’s been a blast.

Last weekend Rob and I (sans kids) went up to Hood and came back down the back side of Gov’mnt Camp.

That little jaunt was so successful that we decided to make our trip to Salem this Saturday with Japes. Salem, as you know, is a trip over the Santiam Pass, not quite has high as Gov't Camp, much greener on the other side and generally faster to get over the mountains.

That trip had some unexpected twists.

We started out late, not getting out of Bend until nearly 1 pm. Stopped in Sisters picked up some munchies after realizing that none of us had eaten lunch, and headed over the mountain. It was a gorgeously clear day and we stopped at a few place headed up to the top to take pics of the Gents.

The pics in order are Black Butte, Mt Washington, and Three Fingered Jack.We’d just passed Suttle lake and gotten over the summit when the car gave an odd little power down. I down shifted and pressed the accelerator and that same odd little power down happened again. Ruh-Roh Shaggy – time to pull over. Lucky for us it was just at Lost Lake, where there is a good sized turn out for ‘slow moving vehicles’ to let the ‘not slow moving vehicles’ get past them.

No sooner had I got the car to the side of the road than the engine cut out. Rob grimaced, gave a few dire threats to the little car and I tried to start her up again. The car tried for all it was worth to start but no ignition, no spark, was getting to it.

My first thought was no fuel, so we looked under the hood and under the car and we had no leaks – new filter, yay but what if the fuel injector motor or fuel pump had gone out? We hadn’t replaced those. I looked down into that very clean little motor and asked my husband, ‘What about the new dist cap, everything all tight there?’ Rob assured me it was all good and we had better call Tory.

Japes was upset of course. He had his heart set on a trip into Salem and the Toys R Us there. With the Scooby cooling its heels at the top of the mountain there was no telling how the remainder of the trip was going to go. We very well could have needed a tow truck to take us back into Bend. My guy did his best to wrestle impatientence, disappointment and the particular pain an ASD kiddo feels with the derailment of our plans. An ODOT plow truck driver stopped to ask if we were okay and we assured him we were, we were just about to call our mechanic.

Call him we did, and that wonderful man, on his day off mind you, drove his butt up to the top of the Mountain for us in record time (about an hour and twenty minutes from Alfalfa to Lost Lake – and it’s a good thing he’s a cop, I’ll just leave it at that). In the time it took him to drive up and rescue us no less than 4 different people stopped to ask us if we were okay. That was pretty darn cool. The ODOT guy came back by 3 times to check on us. He was a very, very nice man, going so far as to offer us a ride to and from the nearest rest area to have a potty break.

Around 4:30 Tory arrived. He gave us a little ribbing for our breakdown and we smiled and did the Goofy ‘Gu-huh’ noise a few times and he finally stuck his head under the hood. First thing he reaches for? That new distributor cap. “Weee-aall there’s your problem,” he says. Rob looks at me and says “Bitch” I laughed. While my husband was off muttering about how his wife is always right, even when she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about, Tory was taking out his handy-dandy screw driver and fixing the loose bit in the dist cap and telling me to turn the engine over and by-gosh-and-by-damn it fired right up and off we went! Well, not quite that fast. There was some more visiting; there was some assuring JP that we were still going to go down to Salem even though it was quarter til 5, a few hugs (from me to Tory) some bullshitting about the crazy people driving insanely fast where there were still spots of ice, yada-yada-yada-blah-blah-blah. Off we went!

We got into Salem right about 6 pm. I like Salem, it’s laid out a lot like Bend. The streets all run either North-South or East-West. Unlike P-town with its’ upteen bridges and freeway interchanges and twisty-twiney hills. I have a serious dislike for driving in Portland. Salem is a bre-e-eze. Lancaster Drive is the new part of Salem – it’s been built up for the past 25 or so years, down town on Liberty is the old part of Salem, much like comparing downtown Bend to the north end. Toys R Us is on Lancaster strip – and JP fulfilled a small part of his I want list this week by getting a few of the advance Star Trek toys. He is now the proud owner of the new Enterprise, a new Kirk action figure and the Scene It DVD Star Trek edition. Other than that, nothing on Lancaster was worth hanging around for. The Mall is the Mall is the Mall. Boring.

We headed downtown for a look-see and supper. We found a fun used bookstore, a bunch of little shops we must go back and explore and nifty little bar and grill with some fabulous fish tacos and not too shabby mural art. Rob enjoyed a good DB Black Butte Porter and I had a scrumptious margarita with dinner. Our after dinner stroll produced a gelato shop that makes the most heavenly caramel gelato and sinfully rich marzipan & almond gelato!

MMMMmmmmm.

We did a lot of window shopping – arriving in down town Salem on a Saturday night the only places that are open are for social gathering. We passed a restaurant where a young lady was displaying her prodigious abdominal movement (belly dancing), another with a band up on a tiny stage and the smells of fresh roasted coffee and stale cigarette smoke billowed forth, and the bookstore where kids dressed in prom finery kissed and groped in the fantasy section. There were several young people dressed in frilly dresses and tuxedos – and most of the girls were carrying their heels in their hands on that warm spring night. Who wants to run through the streets in spring wearing heels? Barefoot is more romantic.

The old Reed Opera House is on our list of ‘must explore’ places when we head back over in a few weeks. The building is amazing but the unique collection of businesses inside rival even the architecture and history. Where else in Oregon can you have Italian gelato, Traditional Greek, Scottish Clothing, Australian Outerwear, delicate Stationary, Gothic clothing, Hand crafted soaps and French Lingerie all in one building?

We strolled, we looked, we tourista’d. We had a grand time of it. Then it got dark, we got tired and it was time to head home.

We bought a used audio book at the book store and listened to Robert B Parkers’ Blue Screen all the way home. Finally, around 1130 pm we poured ourselves into bed.

Chuck, Chas, Charlie & crew are awake -- it's spring!

2009-04-17T08:04:00.000-07:00

when blogging falls the wayside . . .

2009-04-13T06:47:00.000-07:00

Traveling, gardening, kids social lives, wrapping up my grandparents estate, work, more gardening, making jewelry, the knee thing, crochet and knit projects, and a general withdrawal and wee bit of antisocialness. we'll talk again after vacation, kids, promise.

Cotton Knots = Amigurumi Ponies

2009-03-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

I'm still creating nifty little toys by the bushell full. Nothing in the Etsy Shop for sale yet; all of these lil guys are for the office and the incentive program. I thought they'd be welcome, but what I hadn't counted on was their popularity. It's very gratifying --- my hands are getting sore -- but it's still very gratifying. A little 'feeding the evil', as my family calls it, goes a long way toward inspiring my creativity.

To sell these lil guys I need to get buttons that aren't sewn but rather clip in for child safety. I'm considering labeling these for 5 yr and older only so the whole choking hazard thing doesn't come into play. We'll see.

Anyway -- today is a day of family fun and I'm ready to get back to it. Tomorrow is Turkey Dinner and all the fixings at my parents house *sigh*. Talk to you next week!

Wordle of the Day

2009-03-17T20:52:00.001-07:00

That's what you get for assuming

2009-03-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

JP (age 18) is high functioning autistic (aka Asperger’s) and social filters that keep most of us from blurting things out in inappropriate places are not present in kiddos like mine. We were out shopping on Sunday and in Eddie Bauer’s my kiddo starts reciting loudly in a limerick sing-song:

Mama said I’d lose my head

If it wasn’t fastened on . . .

Rob and I both shushed him, thinking this was the beginning of a limerick and prolly not a clean one, knowing our kiddo’s sense of humor is just has bent as ours. He asked why he couldn’t recited it and I asked him to wait til we got to the car. I turned back to the counter to pay for our purchase and he started the same lines over again:

Mama said I’d lose my head

If it wasn’t fastened on . . .

I shushed him again and asked him to please wait (the cashier at the counter made a disappointed noise, like he wanted to hear the limerick) and we paid for our purchase and left. Once we were in the car, JP asked, “Now can I say my poem?” and both Rob and I agreed, cringing a little, expecting a ripping nasty dirty limerick. And this is what he recited:

Mama said I'd lose my head
If it wasn't fastened on.
Today I guess it wasn't
'Cause while playing with my cousin
It fell off and rolled away
And now its gone.

And I can't look for it
'Cause my eyes are in it,
And I can't call to it
'Cause my mouth is on it
(Couldn't hear me anyway
'Cause my ears are on it),
Can't even think about it
'Cause my brain is in it.
So I guess I'll sit down
On this rock
And rest for just a minute....

It’s the poem Lost, by Shel Silverstein from the book Where the Sidewalk Ends

Rob and I felt a little sheepish for shushing our kiddo, and a little more proud at how amazing and wonderful and thoughtful and funny our kid is.

Gardening and the Tamale Girls

2009-02-26T09:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had dug out all my seed catalogs and began making wish lists. Heirloom tomatoes, purple carrots, mesclun green mixes, summer squash, sugar snap peas, oh my!

Then I wake up to snow today. *sigh* I'm still moving forward on my seed orders! I order from multiple sources (see the listings below) to get as many different varieties and to support as many different small businesses as I can. I'll tell you an odd fact. In the midst of the worst economic climate of my lifetime I'm spending more for local quality, American quality, than I am on foreign goods of any kind. I want to help my friends, my neighbors, my country and sending my money over sees to save a buck isn't helping anyone.

Yesterday afternoon the doorbell rang setting the dogs off in such a tizzy that I couldn't ignore them and continue working like I normally would. I put aside what I was working on and walked out to the living room bellowing a blast of 'shush' at the pups. When I opened the front door before me were two startled looking gals. The first was a young woman who was perhaps all of 30 yrs old and the other was her daughter of about 7 yrs of age.

They were driving through the neighborhood selling homemade tamales. My first thought was no, but then I considered, here is a hispanic family that most likely is unemployed too or down to one income like so many of us. Mom and kiddo are taking the initiative and making extra with what they know and can do.

"How much for how many?" I asked.

Kiddo responded, "12 for $13"

"Sold!" and one quick transaction later I was holding two bags of tamales that were still warm! Salad and fresh veg later and we had supper delivered.

Those tamales were soooo good! They fed the soul.

To Mrs Hernandez and her kiddo, thank you so much for a delightful and delicious meal.

To the rest of us, supporting our own may cost more, but not so much as it would cost us to sit on our hands. We know that there is only one way out of this. We have to help each other in ways that matter.

http:// greenthing.etsy.com

http://www.cooksgarden.com/

http://www.silverfallsseed.com/

http://www.wildgardenseed.com/

Amigurumi Rouge or It wasn't easy -- but it was worth it

2009-01-31T12:31:00.001-08:00

I like to make things. Good food, fun jewelry, gardening, afghans, hats, gloves . . . and now amigurumi. I've known about toy making from crochet for as long as I remember. The last time it was this popular was in the early 70's when I was a toddler. It's seen a revival in the past couple of years and it's been on my periphery -- mostly because my kiddo's are past the plushie age. More or less.

Why bother to make for one specific person, since my kids are past that age? It's a lot of fun to make something for someone I love than to make it for sale, or just because. I like making things for both of those reasons, too, but it's more fun when it's for a loved one.

Boo likes any plushie with a twisted bent. That will be a creative & technical challenge for me to fulfill. I'm working on it and when I have results I'll let you know. Japes on the other hand has really specific likes and dislikes and they mostly center on the media world. TV characters, movie, comic, video game characters and the occassional fictional character from a book. The creative part is already accomplished then, because I don't need to think up a critter. It would still be a technical challenge, to see if I could duplicate a character in yarn form without a pattern.

I didn't know if he would actually like to have it, as in anticipate its completion, or if he would just appreciate that mom made something just for him instead of for his sister. I thought chances were good for him to just enjoy it and enjoy that it was made for him. I'm glad to say I was very wrong on that point. My kiddo didn't just love the idea, he was so anxious for me to complete it that he checked in with me and my progress every 30 minutes or so, over the 15 hours it took to create the critter. The last hour of finishing touches he sat beside me humming and grinning and rocking and being anxious for its finish.

When it was done my kiddo grabbed her up and gave her a thorough inspection and then gave me a big ol hug and kiss and a 'I love it mom, she's perfect'. I cried.

I'm darned proud of how it turned out. I had a picture of the character to work from and truth told I didn't even aim for all the sassiness of that picture but all in all I think I did a fan-damn-tastic job of it. What do you think?

Introducing Rouge the Bat and my amigurumi Rouge the Bat:

Recent Projects

2009-01-30T08:30:00.001-08:00

Feel the brrrrrrrr . . . erm . . . I mean burn!

2009-01-26T10:52:00.000-08:00

It’s not easy to blog while you’re in the work mind-set. But I’ve missed two weeks in a row again -- Sunday was the day I set aside to be consistent and blog and I’ve even missed that. I’m not the multi-tasking fool that you think I am. I can only put so much on the pile before things start sliding out from the weight on the top.

So! What am I doing? I’m working my ass off to get the 20 lbs I put on in the past year back off. The scale says I’m getting there sooner rather than later. I don’t like counting calories, I don’t like giving up potatoes and bread (god I could have a major pity party over how much I miss bread!) I don’t like cutting cheese down to once a week in miniscule amounts. I hate crunches! I hate them. I hate pain, it hurts!

But. I like that I’ve dropped 2 pants sizes already. I like that I feel stronger each day when I speed walk 2 miles . . . then 2.25 miles . . . then 2.5 miles and now I’m up to 2.75 miles in the same amount of time that I was doing the 2 miles just a month ago. I scream/yell like I’m labor when I get to the last 10 crunches but the extra bits that were sagging around my middle are pulling back and up and are in the place they are supposed to be. Instead of looking like a block of dough, I can almost see the hour glass underneath the dough, and I like that too.

That is what I’m focusing on. To the detriment of work it seems; I may be back into the office so that my quality may be evaluated. I disagree with the errors that have been called and my TL is fighting them but I could lose this argument and be back in the office for at least a month. That would blow the diet/exercise plan all to hell but I’ll cope.

I am freezing my noogies off with this cold weather and the weight loss. Gorry! The extra padding was keeping me warm but now that I’m jump starting the calorie burn I’m cold all the time. Is this normal?

I like a cool house as a rule, some where I the 65 – 68 degree range, but lately 73 degrees is where I’m setting the thermostat. I read a great quote this morning that the only thing that keeps you warm in January is tea and seed catalogs. I definitely agree!

Next week we break the back of winter. Feb 2nd is both ground hogs day (secular version) and Imbolc ( non secular version) I’m very very much looking forward to it. Come on Spring!

Goals are good to have.

2009-01-11T08:51:00.000-08:00

Good morning M’dear! Such a week it’s been. I’m half stressed out – it’s an ugly kind of stress – and that means it affects my confidence. The source: work. I have strict metrics to meet on a monthly basis and for the past 9 or so months I’ve been meeting them easily and with great alacrity. Then last month and now this month, boom.

The bottom has dropped out from under me and I’m floundering. Those metrics are pretty significant to my position and dropping the ball can lead to all sorts of unpleasant things. I’m disputing one of the findings. It’s a 50/50 shot at whether or not it goes my way so I won’t count on it. I have zero room left for error for the next 3 weeks. I am a perfectionist and very very hard on myself when I miss the mark.

My direct supervisor thinks I should take a deep breath, let it go, and get back to being perfect. Ha! That’s sort of a stupid way to look at it. Let the potentially harmful to my position/record go and go back to being perfect. Yah. So not me. I’ve never been a laid back ‘shit happens’ kinda gal. I’m a kicking and screaming kinda gal. I’m fighting the error and working hard to remain perfect at the same time. I couldn’t fight it last month, I did drop the ball; I missed an update on a procedure and as result followed outdated information. That’s a no-no. That has a potentially negative effect on our members/providers. So I’m getting a little obsessive.

**

However! I’m not dragging it home with me in my off hours. I’m leaving it with the desk and as soon as I turn off that computer I drop work related stuff in the mental bin labeled: 8 a.m. tomorrow. Or, that’s the idea anyway. I can imagine Rob reading this in a couple of hours on his RSS feeds and shooting me such a look. He keeps me honest.

**

The big chunk of my focus is this: I gained 20lbs in 1yr!! Ack!!! Argh!!! I’m FAT! It all began when I started doing hikes on uneven ground back in late 2007 /early 2008. My knees started swelling and giving me some pretty bad pain. I went to the Dr, remember? As a result I stopped exercise almost entirely to let my knees heal. Then when they stopped aching I got focused on other activities and exercise didn’t make itself a feature of my daily life and I started eating without really doing any calorie counting at all. I made a few swipes at it. But I didn’t make it a priority and a daily habit. So I got fat-ter. I went from looking down and seeing my toes to looking down and seeing my breasts, then my belly and having to bend over both to see my toes. That’s pretty damn awful.

I’m back on the treadmill. Every single day. I’m working back up to a full hour + 10 minutes of stretching at the beginning, midway point and end. I working for it, but isn’t quite there yet. I’ve dropped the calorie intake sharply and am making sure over 60% of my daily foodstuff is fresh fruit and vegetables. No flour, no sugar (I don’t eat much sugar anyway, not a sweets addict), no white rice, no russets, no simple carbs at all. Complex carbs and fish and chicken and raw vegetables, cooked vegetables, nuts, fruits, dried fruits and water! I’ve got to jump start the metabolism and drop this weight + the weight was working on dropping when I fell off the health lifestyle wagon. I’ve stepped on a scale once this week and I’ll step on it again once next week and keep track.

Logging all the exercise, water, food intake, nutrients (vitamins, glucosamine chondroitin (sp?), ibuprofen (knees!)) and been completely forth right about every challenge met and failed is the only way I dropped 40 lbs two years ago. I’ve done it before; I know I can do it again. I will do it again. Dammit.

**

Rob is on the same path, working right along beside me. You know when the woman who does the majority of the meal prep starts eating badly and failing to exercise with her work out partner that he’s just as likely to fall off the wagon as she is? Yep, him too. He’ll drop it back off a lot faster than me and my jealous bone will growl at him but I’ll celebrate it too. A healthy man is a happy man.

**

I’m looking through seed catalogs looking at plants for spring. I’m very much ready for spring. Winter isn’t even a month old yet and I’m over it. Ya know this time of year makes me thing of Sedona and Flagstaff? I’m thinking of raised beds and container planting. Making some sketches, looking at what I have and arranging it in my mind. I want a lettuce/greens bed, I want heirloom tomatoes (because 8.99 a lb is friggin ridiculous!), I want my basil and fennel and dill and oregano and thyme and tarragon and calendula, I want zucchini and summer squash and cucumbers and peas and onions. I have a pretty big I want list. Come on spring!

**

Books! I’ve been reading fun things – authors I enjoy for light fun reading before bed:

Fearless Fourteen, by Janet Evanovich

Plum Spooky, by Janet Evanovich

Wolfsbane & Mistletoe, edited by Charlaine Harris

The Lord of the Rings (Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, Return of the King), by JRR Tolkien

That’s about it kids, I’ve wound down for the week. Have a great Sunday

The little updates strung together into a semi coherhent tale.

2009-01-04T07:33:00.000-08:00

Here i am ! I wasn't MIA so much as TMIA (too much in action) corny, cheesy, true. I am so over the holidays. They are done. Fini. Ka-poot. After spending several months getting ready for the holidays, knitting, crocheting, making jewelry, making sauces, this party, that party, the craft fair and then finally the annual parental visits, I am DONE!

I got incredibly fat in the past several months from a combination of too much food, no exercise and poor time manangement. I'm back to regular exercise and I have a sincere wish that it won't take twice as much time to take it back off as it took to put it on but I think that's a rather vain wish. When I'm overweight the arthritis is worse. Pain free hands are essential when you spend your day at the keyboard.

Speaking of keyboards -- as you know I've been trying to break out of my current position into a another department for the better part of a year -- and failed. I am a failure no more -- yay! I am still in my current department, however I have been promoted and earned a rather nice, and timely, raise. My promotion is effective Dec 1 . . . the same day Rob's position was eliminated at his company. Argh! Of course, we did know it was coming. The housing industry has collapsed and eventually those companies that supply the suppliers were going to be paring down to the minimum. Rob's company is doing that now.

We turn 40 this year. That's a significant sort of number. I think it is a good time to stop, take stock in what we've achieved, and get ready for the next big step in our lives. We have two kiddos that are very smart, working steadily on their own goals and building strong and happy futures. Knowing we'll have our last chick in university in 4 yrs is a very solid and gratifying future event. We know that we are likely to leave Bend shortly after Boo graduates -- this town -- I could go off on a tear about how my home town is no longer something I'm proud of or want to be part of but it's rather pointless to bitch. I would rather be in a smaller town closer to a city than be in a small city that everyone tries too hard to make into a big city with a 'small town feel'. Wtf is that??

My company has offices in many cities in many states and as long as I am within commuting distance on those rare days they need me in the physical office I can move almost anywhere. As my best friend looks around at opportunities to remake the second half of his working life, it adds freedom and new initiative to moving out of the area and making a home and a new career choice in a different area.

He is giving careful consideration to a couple of options. I know which one I'm rooting for, but I won't tip the scales by being too public about it until he's made his choice.

I'm still creating jewelry and crochet and knit items and being moderately successful at selling them in my Etsy shop. I have plans to create a sunroom/greenhouse out of / off of my patio in the next couple of months -- with all the new neighbors, privacy fences and two story monstronsities my sunlight has been seriously curtailed and I need to capitalize on what I have left. I'll post pics of that endeavor as soon as we get started. I'm thinking late March.

The kiddo goes back to school tomorrow and I am taking the day off to be with my best guy. To have a cuppa coffee and sit and visit, sans kids, about us. To be Rob and Noni, not Mom and Dad. There is a storm coming in, I have to get out to Costco, stock the cupboards with some healthier options than holiday fair, do some laundry and walk walk walk walk walk.

I'm back for Sunday blogging m'dears! Talk to you next week (or sooner )

Fast Update

2008-12-03T06:41:00.001-08:00

I've been a blog slacker -- but if you look at the history of this blog you'll see how much of a slacker I can really be. Okies, just a few tidbits of news. Craft Fair is tomorrow -- my hands have produced a nicely rounded selection of warmies for sale -- lets hope some folks have money to spend.

The government has come to the conclusion that my son is autistic. I'm told that they came to that decision in an unprecedentedly short amount of time. >>insert big eye roll here<<

The last nail on the coffin of the housing economy hit this week. The wholesalers are closing/laying off. Yup, that includes ppl like my guy.

There have been funny stories and moments of laughter and fun but I'm just not in the mood to sit in front of the computer and write them out after spending hours with yarn and hook. It just feels like more work rather than the fun of my scatter-brained ramblings.

I do miss you all -- and we will get together again -- soon!

Off Topic

2008-11-14T07:09:00.000-08:00

This is not about me and mine, it is about something that annoys me. The subject is intolerance. You know how much it bugs me. I don’t understand it. On the flip side I don’t really understand why people seek attention either. That also bugs me.

This morning on CNN their humourist/satirist reporter told us that Bend’s own Thomas Beattie is preggers again. They spent the next 6 minutes finding different ways to mock him by calling him He/She/It. It just disgusts me. Let’s talk about identity for a second.

I was born in Prineville, Oregon, U.S.A in 1969. My parents named me and I had a relatively safe and happy childhood. Now I am an adult who prefers the nickname my baby sister gave me when she was 18 months old to my Christian name. I don’t identify by the name I was born with but with the name bestowed on me as a toddler by another toddler. I live in Bend and identify myself as a Native Oregonian before I identify as an American – but I am an American. Those are the identities I choose for myself.

I know a couple, one of whom comes from Canada and the other from South Africa; those are the countries of their birth. They identify as Oregonians and Americans – and then they identify with the countries of their birth as well. I have friends and family from Mexico who also identify as both American and Mexican. They chose their identity.

I know that a few of my gfs will read this and say, but Noni choosing your gender is not the same as choosing your cultural identity. I have to cry bullshit. It is the same. How you see yourself is exactly the same. I see myself as a Mom first, a Wife second, an Oregonian, a good cook, a yarning woman (both verbal and fiber, lol) , etc . . .

Thomas Beattie is a man. That is how he names himself, how he sees himself and how he lives his life. Why would anyone place importance on his marital status and procreative status? I know the flip side is that he put himself out there to begin with. I can’t confirm or deny that, and from a monetary stand point it was obviously worth it to him to create a 9-day wonder over his pregnancy because it landed paid talk show gigs. My privacy means more to me than money – but I wasn’t in the position of having someone out me to the press and being in a needy place for cash. So what Thomas does for himself and his family regarding the press and publicity is his and his wife’s business.

I’m not looking at what Thomas and family have done to put themselves in the public eye.

I am looking at the reactions of the American public. We haven’t grown up as a people yet, have we? That the press and the commentators and the angry Jane and Joe public have to get up on their soap boxes and preach against how another human being identifies himself is just flat out stupid. It does not threaten your wheaties, your taxes or your house plants. It does not make you impotent or make your eggs fall out of your uterus. It does not negate the existence of your god/goddess, you can still take communion, be baptized, and confess your lust of your neighbor and/or your lust of Thomas! His life, the lives of his wife and children do not make so much as a dent in your everyday routine unless you make a point of letting it.

Why does anyone deliberately hate?

Playing Catch-up

2008-11-10T06:45:00.000-08:00

Actually, I'm not behind on anything except blogging. I've made 30 pairs of fingerless gloves for the craft fair -- and sold mulitple pairs on my Etsy -- that's all to the good. I've been having fun reinvesting what I make in nice yarns and bits and pieces for jewelry. Avon is all wrapped up, yay! I shampooed the carpets this weekend. Getting the house spic-n-span for the holiday season.

We got to see a girlfriend and her daughter for dinner Saturday night, that was a kick in the pants. Leja (pronounced Lay-ha) is at that age where you can almost see her growing minute by minute. She's a tightly packed ball of energy that rolls in seemingly perpetual motion until she just stops. That stop is finite -- it involves falling instantly to sleep. Children are amazing.

I started a new project, working on a lap throw made from a variety of afghan stitches -- a sampler of textures -- it will be a fun and warm bit of whimsy for the Kewbie Life.

Sunday was very nice day all around -- it included an afternoon spent with Mother Hen -- sipping tea and talking yarn and doing a bit more on the throw. I got to see her projects and I have to say again -- and here publically! -- that she is a fabulous beginner in the art of crochet. It's a peaceful and delightful way to while-a-way a Sunday. It's a kick to watch her work out the process and absorb the info so that as she moves on to the next step pretty darn confident of the whole. From not being able to decipher a pattern to reading it with confidence in 2 hours flat is pretty darn fabulous.

There have been several new books released lately. I've been reading a great deal but I haven't written out my thoughts on the books yet. I'll post the links below if you're interested to see what fiction has captured my imagination of late.

Today everyone goes back to work and school this morning and I'm looking forward to a relatively quiet (except for the phones) day.

The sky is leaden again to day -- I look out the front window and it's as if there is a film noir blue filter over the world. What a notion --- will there be a film noir script for the day?

hugs you.

Books Read:

Greywalker (Greywalker, Book 1) by Kat Richardson
Poltergeist (Greywalker, Book 2) by Kat Richardson
Underground (Greywalker, Book 3) by Kat Richardson

Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, Book 7) by Laurell K. Hamilton

Fare Thee Well Samhain . . Merrily Met All Souls . .

2008-11-04T21:41:00.000-08:00

Barack Hussein Obama

Today is a fabulous beginning to the New Year.

Happy New Year m'loves. Happiest of New Years.

It's October darling, turn out the light and come to bed . . .

2008-10-27T06:41:00.000-07:00

Ack!

I’m here, truly, I am here! There is a more going on this month than the other 11 months combined. I think there is a direct relationship between my ability to communicate effectively about the thoughts swirling through my brain and the level of activity that creates those very thoughts.

I haven’t even read that sentence to Rob and I can hear him say ‘bullshit’. October is so much the month of ending and origin. This culture wraps up the year in December. The Chinese celebrate the New Year in February. South America celebrates it in June; which, now that I think about it, is analogous to a December year ending. Every people looks at the dying of the year and looks forward to the return of life.

This is that dying of the year for me and my faith. Last harvest, the dying of the sun and my birthday all happen this month. I want to crawl in my yearly cocoon, wrap up in a warm and wooly blanket (man); let the cool autumn winds and rain kiss my cheek before I hideaway for the winter. The Scorpio that is me hates the need for over sharing information about my family. The exhibitionist can keep a blog and tell you, Dear Reader, what’s going on; however you and I share it together in a quiet place, early in the morning, when the sun hasn’t even been born in the sky. We share it quietly, just the two us, over a hot cuppa tea/coffee. We talk through quiet smiles and soft laughter and a tear or two. **sighs**

I am in the midst of turning out a lot of information about my son to the government so that he can have an independent income from SSI while he continues in Transition Co-op and learns the skills to be that independent young man. SSI isn’t the only one that wants that info, the deepest hopes and concerns for our kiddo. The school district has its mountains of paperwork to fill out to appease another arm of government that pays the professionals to teach my son how to be that independent young man.

These are both very necessary and good things for Japes to have. SSI is income and TC is education that will lead to more education and hopefully remove his dependence from SSI. I’ll say it one more time, filling out the reams of paperwork and answering roughly a thousand personal questions about my son turns out to be a good thing because of the support it will get him for the next three or so years.

I froggin hate it. I despise talking to total strangers about my kiddo. I have an incredible and intense aversion to casting anything about JP into a negative connotation in order to communicate his disability to bureaucratic entities for any reason. Even knowing that the result will benefit my kiddo, I resent and abhor that strangers, who will never again interact with my kiddo or myself, have this insatiable need to pry into our lives and strictly define how much Japes autism changes his life from ‘normal’ to ‘abnormal’.

This is October – it’s the month for withdrawal not for jumping out of the dark and proclaiming ‘here I ammmm!’ in a bad Steve Martin caricature. The darkness is coming to the land and with that slow blanket comes quiet and peace and the laying down of urgency and the welcoming of a slower pace. But I had several Dr’s appointments this month. Must be sure the cancer has not returned – but each time I return for another round of tests I can’t help but feel my heart crawl up my throat and lodge itself there while I wait for results to come in.

She called me Friday afternoon and let me know directly that everything came back in ‘normal’ ranges and that there is no sign of the wicked crab returning. She followed that up with a letter, put it in writing, to let me know that we only have one more year of hyper vigilance to get through and we can say ‘Yay, the cancer is licked and shall not return!’ Well, not really, but we can back down to yearly visits again rather than 2 or 3 times a year. But as the appointments got closer, I got quieter. Until I know what’s going on I don’t want to talk about it. No matter how much it’s on my brain I can’t sit down and talk about it until I have the answer one way or the other.

The financial world – we won’t go there. Not yet.

The work world – I’m still trying to get into the Training department and still not getting there.

The Rob world – my gorgeous man is sick, with the flu, right after getting the flu shot!

The JP world – I just had a rant about, see above.

The Boo world – may get her own story here soon as basketball season is staring up for her.

My girlfriends world – Wow, I could blog about ya’ll but you already know what’s going on in your world.

I am officially no longer an Avon Lady come Oct 31st. I am a small success at Etsy. Ladies from around the states seem to agree that my pretties are fun and unique and they’d like to own one or two. That’s fun.

I’ve wound down m’dear. I need more coffee and to get a bunch more paperwork signed.

Have a happy Monday!

Nothing to Report - - -

2008-10-16T15:17:00.000-07:00

Okay that's a fib -- but i think ye dear old blog is going to go back to Sundays only for a while.

I'm thinking about stories to tell but I haven't had the time to sit down and type them. Be patient, i will be back!

A Good Day

2008-10-08T05:57:00.000-07:00

I didn’t get the job. You’d think I would be disappointed over it. I’m not and I’ll tell you why. The team lead in the interview had no patience for the process. You could hear in her voice that this was a perfunctory meeting that she wasn’t taking seriously because she already knew who she wanted to hire. In my company, as I’ve said before, this is normal and quite common. The team lead already has the candidate for promotion in mind, however they still take the time to interview all the qualified applicants. This gal was just awful. I’d play poker with her any day.

For real money. I have to add though, that the gal that did get the position is a perfect fit. I would have been less perfect after my respect for the team lead dropped after the interview. I would have found it difficult to put that meeting out of my mind completely. I had also managed to talk myself out of wanting to leave my comfy telecommuter position as winter comes nipping at our heels. Sarah, the gal who did get the position, will be a fabulous trainer and she will succeed admirably.

On to the Etsy shop! I made two more of the casket tag bracelets and put them in my shop with the thought that they would sell before Halloween. Wowsers, did they? Both sold Monday within a couple hours of each other. Bam! Gone. I have 5 more tags coming to me and I’m hoping they arrive today so I can replicate the success of the first two before the holiday is gone. I think there is a window for the success of such an item and this is the month for it. I hope both ladies love their new pretties.

My parents are concerned, as is most of the world, over how much of their retirement funds are going poof. That’s pretty much all that can be said eh? I’m not as concerned, I have over 25 yrs of working life to recover before I have to invest so much feeling into what my 401k is doing/not doing. My head is not in the sand over it, but investing a lot of negative emotion into something I can’t reverse by worrying is just a waste of time and perfectly good worry.

I’m still crocheting and enjoying the process. I need hand models to wear the mitts so I can take pics for posting. It’s hard to take pics of my own hands. I think I’m going to have to invite a mess of Boo’s girlfriends over to be models.

Rocky Horror Picture Show is going to be at the Tower for Halloween. My one and only true Boo would give her little pinkie finger for the chance to dress as Columbia and be there in the audience shouting back the calls to the screen. We’ll see if that’s doable.

Rob is recovering from a nasty infection in his wisdom tooth; the same tooth that is going away in a month or so with its 3 mates.

Japes is just enjoying each day as it comes. He’s the second most spoiled child I know.

Happy Wednesday M’dear, today is a good day.

October -- three birds on a wire

2008-10-01T05:22:00.000-07:00

I interviewed for the trainer position for a third time yesterday. The TL gave me exactly 20 minutes of her time. I didn't get that position, no matter how you slice it, this was prehired as well. Of that I'm certain. It's frustrating of course. From a coporate view point, to take the time and go through the interview process with all of the qualified applicants helps to keep those applicants interview skills up, gives TL's a chance to know more of the people available to draw on, even after they've already made up their minds who they are going to promote. From a personal point of view, why bother to get my hopes up or put me through the paces wasting your time and mine if you have no intention of seriously considering me for the job? I could go on and rant a great deal more, there were several other indications that I was never seriously considered for the position, but the end result would be the same. So, no rant. A little disappointment and frustration voiced.

I am going to revel in the fun aspects of my job (job, not career) for the winter. I work from home and can wear bunny slippers any time I want to. I don't have to worry about a bad hair day, I can be a dreadlock baby if I want to. I am not in the office watched for 'coroporate appropriate behavior', again this means I can do what I want between calls and while it's on the 'not appropriate' list in the office, at home no one can censor me for it. Like reading a book between calls, or picking up the knitting or crochet, or folding clothes or just watching the squirrels at the feeder. I can play light classical in the background all day. I never walk into the bathroom and smell other ppl. I won't have to drive on ice and snow to get to work!

*sigh*

Carpal Tunnel or Arthritis?

I don't know yet. I'm making the appointment today. For the past several years its been primarily in my right hand, my dominant hand that handles the most tools over the course of a day. Now it's in my left hand, and putting any weight or pressure on my palm is enough to get a small girly scream out of me. dammit. And I don't know if I blogged this earlier but I got a stern note from my Ob/gyn office pointing out in CAPS that I had failed to make an appt at 6 months on the dot from my last one (they were supposed to be every 3 months but she agreed to 6 mos last time) and that the cancer I get isn't somthing you f*ck around with. So. Two Dr appts this month for me and one for Japes. We got the dental thing squared away for my kiddo. I like this new Dr office. They are good ppl with reasonable rates. It's going to cost me less than a quarter of what the first dentist quoted. Crikey he was a greedy man.

14 yr old has got the blues. There is a lot of angst that goes with being a spoiled rotten teenage girl. I wouldn't go back and be that age for real money. Hovering between childhood and that first taste of adulthood. It's a hard place to be in and I sympathize but i had no idea how much hell I put my own mom through with this behavior and I wasn't nearly as spoiled. LOL!

I'm going to price carpet and carpet installation this week too. We brought all the outdoor furniture indoors this weekend, did a good deep feed on the yards and put the big grill away for the winter. Mabon has come and gone and while I spent the day admiring the coming fall and the cool weather, I can't say that I marked the day with a heart and mind reflecting on rebirth. I did think about Laura on the flip side of the planet celebrating Ostara. She is a girl with energy to burn. She kept the day and kept it well.

Here is October. Caesar crossed the Rubicon in October. I was born in October. My second favorite commercial holiday and Holy Day are in October. With enough tylenol and aleve in me I can and will crochet a blizzard of warm, fuzzy, girl bits to sell at the craft fair. I've posted some nifty stuff on Etsy for sale and there will be quite a bit more as soon as I have hand models for the warmers. The craft fair committee is underway and it's time to put a wiggle in it.

Their are two juvenille gray squirrels who have taken up our yard as their home. I'm going to make them a squirrell house and put up a feeder in the big June in the front yard.

I think I found more than 3 birds sitting on the wire . . .

The jewelry is in my shop here and here.

Busy means making choices

2008-09-27T06:50:00.000-07:00

- - - when i get this busy, the blog is something i read, not something i write. Sorry kids -- life will take a breath between soon and we'll have a long talk. Enjoy your weekend!

Brown Squirrels, Blue Herons, Gray Doves, Yellow Rabbit Brush & a Red Scooby Pt 4

2008-09-17T06:18:00.000-07:00

Alkali Lake to Riley

There is a stretch of road from Alkali Lake, which was a dried out squat of land that smells not quite as bad as Abert lake, (Rob says Abert with an Ernie-Muppet accent, Ay Bert)all the way to Riley that has ABSOLUTELY nothing along it. It’s sand, sage, rabbit brush, a juniper tree or two and barbed wire fence. That’s it. 2 hrs of alone time in your head because to talk about this monotony, is itself, monotonous. 100 miles of gray sand. Okay that was sorta nifty. Gray sand, in the middle of a desert where you don’t see obvious volcanic activity is kinda unique.

This many weeks away from the event I can’t tell you what I was thinking of, but Rob and I did have a conversation about midway along this stretch. I fudged the tale a bit, there is something out there in the exact middle of all that. It’s a dried out, uninhabited group of buildings called Wagontire. I don’t have any comment on another abandoned postal drop in Oregon. But Rob and I did look at this expanse with no water in sight, sand and brush and rock ridges and wondered, how did the pioneers get their wagons and horses and oxen through this? Native Americans didn’t have a lot of horses in southern Oregon. They were mostly walking to and fro. But here come the Euros and they come laden in the summer ( wagon travel is not speedy, they were getting here in June and July) with the heat baking down on your and considering that 20 miles a day on good ground was fast I can only guess that to make 12 miles a day was good in this country. It looks formidable to me. I think we both spent the last 50 miles of this stretch thinking on those hardy and rather foolish people. I get to call them foolish because I’m related to them. I know how stubborn they are. Traversing hundreds of miles of desert with horses and oxen and sheep! Amazing.

Riley

Coming up the hill on Riley is a nifty view. There is a sign that stands on poles 40 or so feet tall, the sign on that is another 15 or so feet high by 20 or so feet wide that advertises Riley’s charms. Gas ~ Food ~ Maps ~ with several bogus statements about how this is the last chance for anything before you get to Burns or if you’re headed north, to Bend. It’s a garish little squat in the road and there were several cars with Idaho plates parked there. I can only assume that most of their business has to come from Nevada/Idaho/California/Montana travelers that don’t have GPS or can’t read maps.

Leaving Riley the land becomes more familiar. Ranches, alfalfa fields, sheep and homesteads, complete with poplar trees, are defining the landscape to both sides of the road.

Burns

I expected more. I thought I had some solid memories of Burns but I think I was confusing it with another town but at this point I can’t even tell you what memory I was confusing it with. I think my brain had painted Burns with the memory brush of a town in Nevada but I don’t genuinely know.

Burns is just as dirty and uninspiring as Lakeview. Truly this is a town with very little to it, but it does appear to be on a better economic footing than Lakeview.

They do have a few more stores and businesses along their main street. The houses are on foundations, not on bare ground the way they were in Lakeview, and the properties are cared for. By the time we hit town it was 3 pm. We were hot and getting weary from the heat. The first two things we saw helped immensely. A Dairy Queen and a shady cemetery!

Three weeks later I can still tell you how underwhelmed we were by the service in that Dairy Queen. The ‘manager’ took our order with a sneer on her face and an attitude that beggars description. We would have left except we wanted that cold cold ice cream so badly!

The cemetery was across the street from the DQ. 5 or so acres of headstones and elm trees and walnut trees make for one happy Boo. We wandered that garden for an hour or so, stopping to read many of the names and dates. I found family there. Not surprising really, but I didn’t know they were there. I had assumed that most were either in the Mitchell or Madras or Clarno cemeteries or on family land. There are several ranches in eastern Oregon where family was buried on the land we lived on rather that in church yards or town cemeteries. Even now, by state law, when I pass, I could choose to be buried in a family plot on private land. Lucky for the folks that now own those ranches that I have no intention of being buried, I plan to be cremated, mixed with compost, left to season for a year or so and when the next spring or fall rolls around my children can plant a tree someplace and use what’s left of me to nourish it. No headstones, no caskets, no lead lined ‘covers’, just my ashes, some compost and a tree. A poplar would be appropriate, don’t you think?

I wanted to talk more about the animals we saw driving home, blue heron, antelope, deer, jack rabbits . . . but I’ve dragged this tale out more than long enough over several blogs. If I think of a good ending for the story beyond the tired and quiet drive home, with Rob behind the wheel, the Boo asleep in the back and me with my head against the glass watching the land speed by, I’ll come back and write about it.

We got back to Bend as the sun was sinking behind South Sister. It was a glorious day.

Brain Crowd

2008-09-08T07:21:00.000-07:00

I have several projects on my plate all of the sudden. I didn't expect to go from a relatively lazy end of summer to *BAM* -- too much stuff to even list over night. For the record -- I want a new Dig Cam for my birthday. I'm looking at a Nikon 9 mp. That will bring me many smiles and a lot better pics. This is important stuff. I need to be able to take quality images of the projects I’m making. First because I want to share them on Ravelry, second because I want to list most of them for sale on Etsy. I said I wouldn't be selling at the local craft fair, that was a fib.

I think.

I’m going to step up to HR this week and volunteer to chair the Craft Faire again this year. Last year’s was lacking. I didn’t participate and the gal that I thought would do a good job had a hard time providing direction and leadership.

I have fingerless gloves times many made and am making many times many more. That’s my project for craft fair this month. I’ll make lap throws next month. Both of these are geared toward women who work in offices of indeterminate temperatures. I hope they do well.

JP is finally going into see a dental anesthesiologist so we can get his issues addressed without hitting all of his anxiety buttons and possibly endangering himself and the dentist. I could go off on a rant about another dental office that jerked us around for 6 weeks before they finally came right out and said they wouldn’t help us on our terms, only theirs. In the long run, since it was more a difference of opinion than anything else, I won’t share that rant and cast a negative light on what is a good dr. His staff however . . . argh.

My guy has also started transition co-op! This is a big deal. That’s a blog of its own, but suffice it to say for now, this is the place to help my kiddo continue to grow into an independent young man.

Yay!

There are a couple of road trips coming up this month. I might even finish telling the story of the last one before the next one.

Maybe.

The teenage daughter and I are going the rounds. She’s . . . erm. Mouthy. We’ll see how many weekends she’s grounded and how many games and dances she’ll miss out on before it seeps into that hormone laden brain that Mom isn’t going to tolerate it.

I interviewed for the trainer position. We’ll see. It’s not precisely what I wanted. The exact position I do want just posted. What a rollercoaster. Each interview gives the opportunity to polish my pitch. I’m using them for the feedback and experience more than I’m looking to land the positions. I just don’t have the experience in the department (Claims Adjudication) that they are looking for. My department is finally hiring for the one I have the experience and drive to achieve. We’ll see. It could be a case of another one having been pre-hired. There is a gal that they have had off the phones for 4 months working with the new hires in what they call transition training. That’s usually a good indication that the position was created for one specific person to step into. But company policy is still to open the position up for everyone to try for if they care too even though they have already picked who they want.

Dammit.
That just occurred to me. Dammit dammit. I’m going to give it my all, all the same.

I’m going to stop there and go brush my teeth.
Have a fast and easy Monday, dearie.

I haven't forgotten . . .

2008-09-03T08:57:00.000-07:00

. . . that I still have two more chapters of the End of Summer Road Trip to tell you about. I will get to it. I also had a fabulous memory return to me this weekend. It's about the day the Barnum & Bailey Circus train broke down here in Bend -- about 12 yrs ago. I want to write about both of these events but truly, this is the first week of school, JP is looking at oral surgery and I have a couple of meetings/appts regarding that and dammit I'm just busy! LOL. I have another interview tomorrow with the Training Dept. Keep your fingers crossed and we'll talk about life, love, laughter and have a good rant or two in the process next week.
Oh! And not this weekend, but next? that's the little Fort Rock Harvest Festival -- who wants to go?

Bridge Creek Fire

2008-08-29T16:01:00.000-07:00

I can't talk about this yet. It still hurts a very very great deal. I grew up playing in this exact spot. This was my grandparents & greatgrandparents ranch. Pape brothers own it now, but my memories are here. My childhood was here. My fathers childhood was here. I learned to ride, I learned to fish, I learned to cook, I road on a horse drawn sleigh and explored native American caves here. I learned that nettles sting, that fish tickle your toes and that spring water coming straight up out of the top of mountain is the coldest water you'll ever dip your toes in. I learned it all right here.

We as a family still own land on top of the mountain, the cabins escaped the fire, but the land is scorched. Pisgah will take a lot of years to recover. A lot of years.

http://www.inciweb.org/incident/pictures/1487/0/

Casket tag & skeleton key jewelry completed

2008-08-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

So a few blogs ago I talked about making these for the Boo after seeing the ideas so beautifully executed elsewhere.

Here are the pics of how my efforts turned out. The pics are a tad blurry -- my hands shook.

Brown Squirrels, Blue Herons, Gray Doves, Yellow Rabbit Brush & a Red Scooby Pt 3

2008-08-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

We drove through an amazing landscape, over a man-made causeway that lifts the highway out of the dry bed of an ancient lake. The high mesas above the lake have the same look as the crooked river canyon and the area east of the Ochoco’s from Mitchell to John Day. The eroded walls of the rivers and lakes slope up sharply until the last 20-30 ft before the rim where the rock becomes a crystalline shape that has the look of gnarled and broken teeth.

Those ‘teeth’ then crumble and collapse down those same slopes creating dangerous slides of rock that roll down the sides, again for hundreds of feet, and some of those rocks are the size of small trucks. We drove past them, eyes wide, looking on these massive boulders, that you know by their resting places 60 or 70 feet away from the base of the slope, had bounced down the steep sides and bounced out and over the highway to land on the other side, and bury themselves with the force of their fall deep in the hard packed dried lakebed.
Just wow.

There were many signs proclaiming caution, falling rocks. The only other place in Oregon I’ve seen that sort of intense rock slide activity is up on Hood, just before you get to the top, you come around a huge bend in the mountain and the rock slides are so severe there that ODOT puts up cement barriers to help contain the chunks of granite that could, potentially, knock your ass off the mountain.

They didn’t have cement barriers at the base of these slides in Lake County. The rocks were bigger. I think that someone at ODOT took a look at these southern Oregon boulders and decided that pretending to protect the public by putting up barriers was just a waste of money. These boulders bounce. It gives me a weird chill/thrill up my spine thinking about it 3 days later.

The air as we left that odd spot was turning a little . . . strange. But the odor Rob and Boo and I kept catching wasn’t strong enough to put your finger on and say, ah ha! That’s it! But it was not normal. Valley Falls was the next squat in the road (boarded up gas/store/café) we passed, here the highway split and Hwy 31 came to an official end – if we turned left we’d be heading back north up Hwy 395 toward Burns, if we continued south we’d be going to Lakeview and the Oregon/California border.

I have to tell you truly, we made a bad choice. We continued south on down to Lakeview. The drive into Lakeview, another 40 or so miles, was pleasant. But then we got there. One word. Ew.

Lakeview, Oregon

From the north approach to Lakeview you can see the remnants of a dried up industrial district including smokestacks for a mill and the warehouses for the mill until you finally reach the official entrance to town. Here stands a goofy looking 15ft tall red and blue cowboy, arms akimbo, bandy legged, hat sat back on his smooth sloping forehead, left had waving at you in that friendly open palm way, with a sign that proclaims Welcome to Lakeview Oregon. Right behind it was a cemetery. Not just any cemetery m’dears, but a dried out, poorly tended, sad but extensive, cemetery.

Goth-girls’ comment: That’s just wrong, Momma.

Do you remember what Prineville looked like right after Hudspeth closed their last mill in late 80’s? It was a sad, dirty, swiftly deteriorating little town. Its population fell in just 10 years from nearly 8000 souls down to just over 3500. This was before Les Schwab saved that town by building their corporate HQ right there at the Bend-Redmond ‘Y’ when you first get to town. That is exactly what Lakeview looked like. We drove around town; it took maybe a ½ hr to see everything from the library, to the hospital, to the combined Forest Service/USDA/State ODOT offices, to the elementary/middle school/high school, to the 15 or 20 empty store fronts. The bar was boarded up, the gas stations were boarded up, and real estate offices were boarded up. The majority of homes we saw were manufactured to mobile homes. The few stick built ran the gamut from paper slap ups from the 20’s and 30’s when cheap mill housing was thrown up to old dilapidated houses that could be very nice indeed with a little love and a lot of cash. Lakeview as a whole was just sad.

We talked about heading on down to the border just so we could say we’d been to California that day but in the end decided that the 3 hrs it would take to get to Burns made the trip south just a little too much. Around came the Scooby and back out of Lakeview, past the dried up and weed choked cemetery we drove. We returned to the same 'Y' in the highway that we'd passed on the way down and this time took that fork in the road. Where the air was a little funky. Not so funky that you could name it yet, but getting funkier by the mile.

Abert Lake, Oregon

The whole darn trip was eminently worth the time, effort and sad cemeteries for the view of Abert Lake. It’s gorgeous. The blue of that lake, ringed by aqua greens, is just so intense that you think it might not be real. The beaches are white-white, the water pristine, and the hills around it alive with blooming rabbit brush and tall sage and colorful spires of mullein. That blue is the intense color that the travel brochures show you have the Caribbean, you know? It’s the cornflower blue of late August skies, all the more vivid for the sand and basalt hills surrounding it. There wasn’t a boat in site on the lake, anywhere, and we didn’t see any people on those pristine beaches either. The day was hot, climbing into the high 80’s even at this elevation, but not one local from Lakeview or Valley Falls was out on the water, skiing, fishing or swimming. The lake was untouched by man. It was breathtaking.

Literally.

Welcome to fourteen miles of stank.

Abert Lake is sitting over a volcanic fault and it has no outlet for its water. Crooked creek flows into the lake, nothing flows out. The sulfur fumes coming off the water were enough in some places, to make your eyes water. Gulls and terns galore inhabit the shores of this body of water. Watching their movements on land and in the air was something I could spend a great deal of time waxing over; but you’ve seen gulls and terns haven’t you? While fun, these are birds most of us have seen. But . . . have you ever seen a partridge?

I did. I saw a family of them sitting up on a big ol boulder, surrounded by sage and looking down on the road. Such fun birds! Their feathers were still mostly summer brown but there were gray/white flecks to them and they had that sleek little head with the crown that calls them out as something other than a prairie chicken. That is another bird to add to my life list.

The beaches are mineral residue, with water sitting in this same place, over an active volcanic fault, without appreciable movement for centuries; the water has leached all kinds of mineral salts to the surface. Then the lake evaporates freezes, fills up again and moves those now solid salts around to the edges, creating those nifty beaches. On the shoreline we saw geese and ducks, gulls and terns, and fat and sassy little plovers, there were also plenty of birds of prey sitting on the rim above the lake looking down on the water fowl, no doubt considering lunch.

That’s just reminded me of something from earlier in the trip that I forgot to tell you about. As we entered Paisley, sitting up on the rim rock to our right were a grouping of birds. I don’t know what you call a dozen turkey vultures sitting on the rock, looking down on the land, but their they were. Black and brooding and huge and gloriously creepy, like a coven of evil black cloaked harridans; I asked Rob if he knew what they were called when in a group together like that. He allowed as how he had never heard the word, if there was one.

The Boo chimed in that she knew the word.

Disturbing.

We laughed and went on into Paisley

The trip around the lake was simply perfect. The day, the sun, the water, the wildlife all came together to create a moment of serenity and clarity for me. Please do go explore the links to the lake, I found a different set of pictures and info for every mention of the word Abert in this blog. They are very interesting and offer many beautiful pics, sans the smell. By the by, Boo complained the whole way about the smell; moms are good at selective hearing. Where do you think our kids learn it from?

Too many years ago today

2008-08-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

. . . . a boy and a girl, who were much too young, came together to create a family. Today we celebrate the birth of that family. Happy Birthday to Rob, JP, Boo and me.

I'm a horrible self editor.

2008-08-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

My grammar, my spelling and my coherency (see, I don't even know if that is a word, but dammit, it sounds good to me) go out the window when I’m blogging. I know darn well it should all be popped into Word and grammar/spell checked, read backwards at least twice and then if all has been fixed, publish it. Hah. Not me. I'm an off the cuff kinda blogging chica and since I’m working at the same time one sentence can originate from two trains of thought and come out completely discombobulated.

The point of this short bit of diatribe is this: I do go back and edit them for complete sentences, well thought out sentence structure and paragraphs that fit more than just the basic shape. I don't think I'd want to go back and reread your posts that often, but I would if I knew you were happier with the reworked and edited product.

*sigh* or I can just do the grown up thing and write it all in Word first, edit appropriately and then publish after it's polished. But it might lose some of its goofy charm if I do that.

Heh, I don't know where I'm going with this. I do know that the last two posts sucked for grammar, spelling, and oft repeated phrases and were completely disjointed in several places. I’m fixing them, whether you choose to re-read them or not, I’m fixing them. I blushed at some of those awful errors.

English really is my first language. I swear.

Brown Squirrels, Blue Herons, Gray Doves, Yellow Rabbit Brush & a Red Scooby Pt 2

2008-08-25T15:52:00.000-07:00

Actually I need to back up a little before we visit Paisley. If you're lost go back a blog and read Pt 1, otherwise let’s sally forth into the wilds of Southern Oregon.

In Summer Lake we passed a little cemetery, (In all we saw 6 separate cemeteries on our trip; and of course the Boo had to comment on each one, being in that mindset of late, see here & here.) there were huge old oaks and elms surrounding the grounds. I slowed down to take in the view and look at the unique headstones and markers and we talked a bit about stopping for a look-see. Boo was all for it and Rob and I weren’t. Our tummies were growling and lunch sounded like an option we wanted to pursue sooner rather than later.

As we talked and I rounded a bend in the road, I caught outta the corner of my eye, a brown squirrel a flying across the road; hurling itself at my tires in that mad suicidal plunge into the abyss, known as Highway 31. I did have the chance to stomp on the brakes slow down and let it cross in front of us safely. I was fascinated. I’ve seen grey, long-tailed, fluffy squirrels my entire life here in Bend. I had never, even after travelling up and down the east coast, seen a brown -- a nut brown -- squirrel. Kinda cool. Another nifty creature to add to my life list.

Summer Lake was nearly dry and it turns out that was pretty common for this time of year, it’s a large ‘lake’ in that the spring runoff fills in several hundred acres with a couple of feet of water because the water table is so close to the surface there. The water eventually dries up having no natural outlets to drain out of, but the water sticks around long enough to help several thousand birds across a few hundred species raise their babies and take off for warmer climes south.

It also provides a fabulous breeding ground for something else rather nasty – skeeters. They have so many skeeters throughout the warm months that the town of Paisley has a Mosquito Festival! It turns out we had missed that local charmer by several weeks but evidence of this years’ (and last years) souvenirs were still visible in the Bait Shop – Feed & Seed – Local Mercantile window; including green glass shot glasses with mosquitoes moriaged to them. From the serious amount of mosquito paraphernalia (one entire row of mosquito repellent products/clothing/candles/sprays) and mosquito covered tourist guano in the store, we weren’t all that sad to have missed the event. I have to note here that I have 4 squeeter bites on my elbow, where it hangs out the window when I was driving.

Dammit.

I just asked Rob if he has any, the answer is, “If I do, I haven’t noticed them; but then I wore a long sleeve shirt yesterday in case you hadn’t noticed. You wore a sleeveless shirt yesterday. I did notice.”

Smarmy smug bastard.

Paisley, Oregon

We stopped a little café in Paisley for lunch, the town was just pretty. The church was emptying out from Sunday service as we pulled into the café’s little gravel parking lot. We had beaten the lunch rush by 30 minutes or so, the place was nearly empty. The waitress, hostess, cook and dishwasher were sitting at a little table in the corner enjoying their brief cuppa coffee before the lunch crowd arrived.

In small town America on Sundays you either go to church from 9 am to 11 am and then go home, get changed into less Sunday-school clothing and then go to town for shopping and lunch or if you don’t frequent a church, you don’t go to town until after church is concluded or there isn’t really anyone to visit with. In my family, from the dinky podunk town of Mitchell, Or it wasn’t respectable to go to town if you weren’t a church go-er until after Sunday service because it just smacked of impropriety. It advertised that you were a heathen. Mitchell makes Paisley look downright cosmopolitan in nature.

The link to Mitchell is really to the café I spent many times many a Saturday in eating home fries, playing pool and pinball and listening to the nickel juke paid for with nickel sized metal slugs we managed to pilfer from the construction of the new gym they were building the year I was 9 . . . those are definitely stories for another day. We’re in Paisley right now. . .
I can’t tell you the last time I had a burger and fries where nothing came pre-packaged. Even the lettuce on the burger was from someone’s garden there in town. The patty was handmade; the home fries were cut from whole russets and deep fried ‘til golden. The bacon on the burger was thick cut, and not the ‘thick’ from the grocery store, we’re talking a ¼ inch or more! The sun tea wasn’t made from a brewing machine but poured outta gallon glass pickle jars that were recycled for sun tea brewing. Like every small town café it had a jumbled mass of notices for items for sale or trade locally, art for sale on the walls by local artists with gallery prices attached and quite a few old photos of the town’s history. It was a good lunch.

We got back on the road around noon just as the locals started coming in for their dose of the week’s news and gossip.

Here’s a little thought for those folks in cities with populations greater than a couple thousand; if you live in a geographically isolated place like Paisley or Silver Lake you have very little outside information coming in. Until the 1980’s and satellite TV became prevalent most of these towns didn’t get any TV reception or very little and that was via antenna only. Speaking from the standpoint of a kiddo who spent weekends in such an isolated place, TV was a sad and frustrating affair. Reception was never guaranteed and the screen was frequently snow-filled and the audio very poor. Radio waves came to them on the AM bands but FM was splotchy and scratchy if at all. The news had to be brought in with the mail. The newspaper companies would mail you your subscription but usually in lump sends of a week at a time. No internet, no CNN, no daily news except on AM bands and that is skewed heavily one way or the other (and why is it that when I cruise the AM bands 90% is church/religion related??).

The towns don’t grow because there is nothing there to draw business, no ports, no railroads, and no major connective highways. Kids grow up and either A. take over the family farm/ranch or B. go to college and never look back.

Not much changes in towns like that. The only new influxes of citizens they get are the kids assigned fresh out of college to the forest service stations there for 1 to 2 years and sometimes only a summer internship. They also get folks that buy a local business from a retiring couple, who themselves plan to use it for added income in their retirement years, until they lose enough money on it or just get too old to actively run it, and then they too sell the business.

Eventually no one is around to buy it because it’s cheaper to make a run once a month up to Bend to the Costco and get everything you need and store it in big old walk in freezer you got with your tax return a few years ago. I understand why small towns don’t grow, in population and in ideas, I come from that sort of community myself and it takes a few generations to leave it behind. Going back is a re-education unto itself. I’ll be pondering small town US of A vs. small city for many nights to come.

And with that, I’m closing out Pt 2. My brain has left the travelogue and gone back to the philosophical. Tomorrow we’ll get to 6 miles of ‘stank’. Promise.

** every place name in this blog has a link to it, just click on the name. i'm also going to post a route map on here to show where we went and how we got there, it was such a FUN weekend! **

Brown Squirrels, Blue Herons, Gray Doves, Yellow Rabbit Brush & a Red Scooby Pt 1.

2008-08-25T06:18:00.000-07:00

We road tripped this weekend for the first time in a long time. There is so much fun to talk about I may mess up the order of things and have to come back and edit this blog.

First off, JP declined to go with us anywhere this weekend, choosing instead to be the man of the house and have the place more or less to him self ( plus a beagle & a maltese). He could reach us by phone anytime on Saturday and his Gran any time on Sunday, however he didn't reach out and call anyone and from the little grins he gave us when we asked about his weekend, I can only assume that my kiddo liked having some freedom and some alone time.

The Boo, however, did indeed go for the ride and again from all appearances and the few effusive words of feedback, enjoyed hell outta the whole thing. Before you ask for pictures of the trip, I'll point out again that I am an in the moment kinda a gal and rarely take pics of places and frankly most of the wild life was too darn fast for me to snap a pic of as it went buy. I am going to cheat though, and post some pics I found of the web of the creatures and places I saw (w/ appropriate links for credits).

Redmond, Oregon

Saturday wasn't a huge long trip of any sort. We went shopping for shoes (the 5'10" Boo is now wearing size 11) for school and then decided to head over to Redmond and see what we could see. It was lunch time when we got to town and bite at Mazatlan was called for. Oh my goodness, Chili Colorado was still on the menu! It's been off the menu at the Bend location for nearly a year. Rob and I nearly cried when went to the Bend restaurant for lunch 8 or 9 months ago and discovered it was gone. The Redmond location has it, we had it, and from now on we'll only be frequenting that particular incarnation of Mazatlan. Since Redmond hadn't turned into downtown P-town overnight there really wasn't that much of interest or new to see.

We drove on west out town toward Terrebonne. My grandmother's sister, Donna, lives in Culver and I was pretty certain I could remember where she lives. Sadly, the last time I had seen Auntie Donna was at her daughter's funeral, 2 years ago. I thought about that as we passed through the tiny hamlet of Terrebonne and thought about how easy it is to make excuses for how busy life is and how hard it is to get out to one relatives house or the other. Silly stuff. My Auntie Donna is the only direct connection I have back to the sound and look and feeling of comfort from my Gran. I should cherish it and nuture it.

Terrebonne, Oregon

The hamlet of Terrebonne was having a classic cars drive in kinda fair day. There were a lot of fun old classics and kit cars covering the parking lots of the business district (the grocery store and 4 office mini mall). We saw stilt walkers and bikers and cowboys and quilt makers and car buffs. Pretty nifty little event. Several semi's had pulled over on the soft shoulder and their drivers were making their way through the event, to the consternation of the drivers trying to just barrell through town at 60 miles an hour. Lot of horn honking. You could still hear the live musician though. Yup. Musician. Only one. Playing guitar and harmonica and singing. Talented fellow.

Culver, Oregon

Huge potato and garlic and onion fields, teeny tiny little shack homes in desperate need of some love ($$$) and an oddball housing development sitting up on a hill built by the Ambern (Clyde and his daughters. Adaptive Homes. That's a doozy of a story for another day.) family. Every other house was empty and for sale. Very sad. The properties just look dilapidated and then you'd look at the home where ppl still lived and those houses were well kept and nice but the empties just dragged the neighborhood down.

I remembered that Auntie lived on Iris ln but it took me a few to remember which end! There is really only one nice apartment/duplex townhome development in town that just happens to sit on Iris ln it didn't take me long to find it.

A short, nice visit was had with the Grande Dame and then we jumped back in the car to head home. It was hot as blazes and even with all 4 windows down it was not a comfortable ride home. Yes, the car has a/c but frankly the gas gauge just disappears when I run it and I'm too cheap to do that unless it's 110 outside.

By the time we got home it was cooling off and the sun was behind the house and i thought i'd turn on the sprinkler and let the grass have a little relief from the heat. I took two steps into the yard toward the spigot and a dove sprang up right in front of my nose and then started doing that one wing dragging hop/flap thing that birds do when they're tryng to convince you to come after them instead of their nest. Being somewhat smarter than a dove, i looked down, and there, nestled in the over long grass was a fledgling dove. All big dark eyes and little brown/gray body. Momma dove was still doing her injured bird bit trying to get my attention. I humoured her and walked a wide cirle around her baby and took a few steps toward her so she could feel like she'd faked me out sufficiently.

We had a quiet evening, checked up on email, read the news; Obama's VP pick, stupid human tricks (car crashes), the weather predictions for Sunday, and then the Boo pops out with, "We should really go on a trip tomorrow". Well. Hmm. Where should we go, we pondered. We discussed directions more than places, there is a lot of Oregon that Boo and Rob have never seen. After a bit of haggling and discussion of distances and such we decided on going due south to the Oregon/California border.

Sunday

Up fairly early and out the door by 8. I wanted to leave earlier but the family thought since it was the weekend they deserved to lolligag around. We fueled up at the little Shell station, 46.00 bucks!, for my hyper efficient little scooby that was just insulting. I truly do believe we won't turn to alternative fuels until we are forced to by economic necessity, but dammit, it hurts. Anyway then we were off! The drive up to Lapine was fun, leisurely, and we just smiled as the traffic zoomed around us. We were Sunday drivers in no particular hurry (at 65 mph) let the busy bee drivers vroom on past.

LaPine, Oregon

Stopped at Rays to get some refreshments for the trip and a cuppa coffee for Rob since he had forgotten to take even a sip of his cuppa at home. Boo looked at me funny when I picked up a single wrapped roll of toilet paper. I told her since we weren't sure of our destination or route, nature may call when there were no facilities about. She made a face and said ewww grosss, I'll hold it, Mom. I laughed. I operate on the theory that if I need something I won't have it-- if I have it, I won't need it. This little theory has served me well over the years and while I can't call it a proven fact, it's these little lessons learned that make living easier.

The drive out of LaPine and onto Hwy 31 was cool and beautiful. Except for the suicidal chipmunks. Golden Mantles & Western Chipmunks galore, playing dodge the tires with my car. I swear to you they stand on the soft shoulder by the road and watch my approach and just before my car gets within a 3 feet of their position they sprint into the road right under my wheels. I was making Rob and Boo nervous because it got to the point where I'd just close my eyes for the 2 or so seconds it took for me to pass the over the strange little sprinters with a death wish. After a while the sun was either high enough, or the impulse for death had abated because they stopped appearing right in front of me.

Fort Rock, Oregon

If you're never been to Christmas Valley or Fort Rock it may be hard to describe. You're in the tree line, up in the pines, douglas, poderosa, lodge pole and then you're back in the desert. Sage brush, rabbit brush and bitter brush with nary a tree in site. We live in the juniper hardwood forest on the east side of Bend. I know it's hard to think of all that juniper and sage brush as a forest but it really is. And nothing makes that more clear than when you get out to the 'Great Basin' of Oregon where a juniper tree is a short, squat, bushy looking tree standing all by itself in a sea of brush and sand.

Fort Rock is this circluar eroded mountain base. All that is left of what was once a huge old butte or smallish volcano is a 350 foot high outer shell of rock in a nearly perfect circle with 1/3 of it missing, like a donut that a giant of prehistory took a single bite out of. You can see it from 15 miles away, rising out of the sand and brush, looking like it must be some man made structure to be standing so alone in the middle of the desert. The closer you get the more that illusion gives way to the reality of this basalt rock feature and the immensity impresses on your brain what a size it had to have been when it began for it to be this enormous now. There is a small community at Fort Rock, called appropriately, Fort Rock. Don't roll yours eyes at me. They didn't name the community at Smith Rocks, Smith Rocks, did they? Nope, it's Terrebonne. So not every community takes the name of it's geologic and topographical features. A lot do. We visited several this weekend, but not all of them.

About a 1/2 mile out from the community is a nifty little community museum. The residents have moved several of the original buildings onto an 2 or 3 acre parcel and put up a little homesteaders museum. The old school house, church, smithy, several homesteaders houses -- we stopped to stretch our legs and get a look at the great pile of rock -- I stepped up on the boardwalk that runs in front of the little office/smithy of the museum and nearly stepped on a lizard. He scattle-tailed it between the boards and out of site before i could even call attention to him.

Inside the smithy all around the tops of the walls were frames filled with obsidian flake arrowheads, spear points, hand axes, awls . . . it was fabulous. There was a gentleman caretaker/volunteer museum guide sitting in an old cane back chair in the corner wearing wranglers, boots and a T-Shirt proclaiming that he had been to Fort Rock Oregon and my wasn't it BIG? He talked about his little hamlet and the history of it and invited us to come back September 12/13/14 for their Harvest Fest. There'll be a lemonade stand run by the Girl Scouts, an Ice Cream Social hosted by the Boy Scouts and a dance and lots of games and a parade. We are going :)

The caretaker extended an invite to take us on a personal tour of the buildings and share stories and it would have been fun but we had to beg off and save it for another day as our goal was still Lakeview.

Silver Lake, Oregon & Summer Lake, Oregon

Both of these worthy little stops in the road are really just mail stops/postal stops without much to speak for them except for the large hay fields, alfalfa fields and fat and sassy cows munching through the fields. They are both across the border officially, out of Klamath County and into Lake County and you are greeted by two lakes in the first 25 miles. Lots of leaning old buildings, an abandoned church or two and a lot of poplar trees to mark where houses/homesteads originally stood. You will nearly always find a homestead, its foundation or its chimney within 10 yards of a poplar tree in eastern Oregon. My own grandparents and great grandparents homes are ringed with them. Some day I'm going to look up the books about our homesteading and pioneer families and see if anyone did a book about the trees and flowers the gals brought out west with them and what they meant to those ladies turning a patch of sand into a garden of love and family and permanence.** I just did a quick google of "poplar tree" and "homestead" and found page after page of phrases like 'and the poplar tree marks the entrance to the homestead' for places as close as Pendleton, Oregon or as far away as Australia. Huh. Whodathunkit?

Paisley, Oregon

In one of Rob's less witty moments he told me paisely looks like mutant spermazoa to him. I haven't owned anything with a paisely print since.

Paisely, Oregon is much more charming and warm a place than the misnomer of 'mutant spermazoa' but I'll have to continue this tale later today --- the phones are getting busy!

** every place name in this blog has a link to it, just click on the name. i'm also going to post a route map on here to show where we went and how we got there, it was such a FUN weekend! **

the quality of his sighs

2008-08-14T06:05:00.000-07:00

I suck at taking pictures of works in progess. I joined ravelry and because I'm digitally challenged when it comes to taking pics that I think are worth sharing . . . I haven't been back. This is not a sign that i'm not crocheting. Quite the opposite. After spending two weeks looking around etsy I've decided that nope, no one makes things quite like I do and I could take my annual fall production of goods, and sell them there, rather than at the local craft fairs. I don't craft to make money, I craft to make enough money to buy more stuff to craft with.

Supporting my yarn habit is a topic that gives Rob the shakes. Hehe, we were in Joann's last week looking for some notions (side note: has that less than inspiring store just given up? gawd, that was a waste of time) and my Man-O casually walked a few aisles further down and meandered back and forth in one particular area. When I'd finished purusing the pathetically empty shelf I walked back toward Rob to see what had his attention.

That's when he started walking back toward me, with a purposeful stride, saying, "Are you done? Good, lets get to the next place and beat the traffic."

I stopped in my tracks, cocked my head to the side and gave that a heartbeat or two of thought.

"What don't you want me to see?" I asked. Maybe I narrowed my eyes a bit.

He stood up straighter (eh hum, excuse me Reader, but isn't that a sure sign of defensive posturing?) and gave me first wide eyes then his own version of a Clint Eastwood squint.

"Nothing." All injured innocence.

I nodded my head and smiled and commented on the bareness of the store and I wondered aloud, besides the findings and notions what else had become skimpy on the shelves? I walked out the end of the aisle like I was going to leave. Rob let out this little sigh of relief and I confess I licked my grin a bit as I made a left hand turn out the end of the aisle and walked back to the area he had been not so subtly blocking.

You know it was the yarn aisle. He also sighed again. If you've been married any length of time you can name your partners sighs. There's the happy, contented sigh; the impatient, slightly irritable sigh; the tired, ain't moving sigh; the forebearing, dammit my wife is gonna cost me money but I love her anyway sigh. Guess which one I heard?

I wasn't joking when I said the store has lost some of its sparkle. They had last years yarns on the shelf, nothing in quanitity, it looked pretty poor in some sections, I'd have only been looking if they had been clearancing it out at a screamin deal. But he didn't know that.

So I walked back and forth, seeming to consider seriously the selection before me. I made little sighs of my own. You know the ones. The oh-my-goodness-this-is-so-tempting-I-must-buy-a-dozen-skeins sigh; the oh-dear-this-goes-perfect-with-that sigh; the oh-boy-I-want-everything-I-see-but-really-shouldn't sigh.

Its about then in the whole body language communication that he fetches up a soul deep sigh that signals he's about to indulge his wife in something he'd rather not but he loves me so much that he just can't say no, "Is there something there you have to have my love?"

I laughed. He says my eyes twinkle merry hell when I laugh wickedly. This was a very wicked laugh. I turned on my heel and strolled out the store with him in my wake and nary a look back.

I won.

'Course, he did swat my bum on the way out the door when he figured out my ruse.

I don't buy yarn in front of him. I just don't do it. It's painful to him and I don't end up buying enough to finish the project and have to go back and try to match dye lots. That's not good. I've only taken him into Juniper Fiber once and the poor dear went into shock after looking at the price of one skein of alpaca wool.

I reread all of that . . . I have to add, Rob is not a tightwad and he doesn't begrudge me any of the pleasure I get from knitting and crocheting. He just doesn't understand the costs associated with it and prolly really doesn't want to know anyway. I can fetch up some deep ol sighs of my own when it comes to his ~~comic books~~ graphic novels -- but they give him pleasure and if I do have opinions on the exspense of colored paper with stilted sentences and incomplete dialog . . . well I'll just keep those to myself.

Seperate but equal . . . I don't remember where I heard that phrase first, and it prolly references a negative connotation, but I use it here to describe two ppl who are matched so well it's almost perfect. Seperate pursuits to keep you sane and an individual but not desctructive to each other or divisive of the relationship. Whoa . . my brain just took a side trip. Yup, I do know ppl in relationships like that. I have a girlfriend who is in that place where awareness of the division is becoming clearer. Your on my mind sweetie. Hugs you.

I will end this entry on a high note. A second trainer position has come up. It's based here in Bend, always a major plus, with very little travel involved over the long term and well . . I did get an interview. It hasn't happened yet. I'm keeping a tad more mum this round. My hopes on the subject are a few blogs back and I don't think reiterating them will change my prospects.

My current project is about 1/5th of the way along, I'll attempt some pics today or tomorrow. Maybe.

Have a thumpin good Thursday!

of Sprint bills, fence builders and other things . . .

2008-08-13T07:18:00.000-07:00

Rob pointed out the other day that I haven't blogged for a week or so. To true, said I, I guess I haven't anything interesting to report or say. I did blog the recipes from Sunday! But that's about it and there really are several things that really don’t' add up to a coherent story that I could write about . . .

Friday, while sitting here at my desk, waiting for the phone to ring, I was cruising Etsy doing searches for disjointed and completely unrelated items I came across a very novel and interesting bracelet that screamed 'that's Boo's!' so

I moved the cursor in the direction of the 'buy' button displayed when my eyes strayed to the price tag. $48. I looked again at the most wonderful object that a teenage baby goth-wanna-be might sell her I-teeth for and thought --- no way José! I'm not spending $48 bucks on that even if it is a splendiferous object. $48 is a pair of shoes! Its two pairs of jeans! It's not one, nifty though-it-be, bracelet. I moved on. The niftiness kept calling me back.

Let me show you this most wonderful item: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=13939072

How wonderfully macabre is that? Remember we are talking about the little girl that likes to take day trips to the cemetery. My brain got to spinning on how I could recreate this sparkling little do-dad for my darling dear. I was positive that if one Wells Fargo casket tag existed, that many more had to be waiting for other intrepid crafty ppl to find.

One sure way to find out was Ebay. I almost squealed like a pop tart when I found them there for $10. A little haggling with an overstock of the little brass plates (he's only got 550 of the damn things!) and I have two of them winging their way to little ol Bend for $5 each + shipping. A little more Ebay and Google reconnaissance and behold! Brass and gunmetal-colored jewelry chain by the foot! Brass findings, little lockets, nifty bone skull beads ( real bone mind you ) and a couple of rather unique clasps later and for $34.54 I have the very cool makings for two such gotta-have-it bracelets for the bobsy twins arriving at my door this week.

I was a wheensy bit proud over my finagling. I also decided to copy another design that I liked that involved skeleton keys which seem to be all the rage currently. That's another story that involves garage sales where ppl think their junk is gold and worth only as much as pure platinum by the ounce. And husbands that buy into sob stories and get stiffed for goods that could have been obtained brand spanking new for the same price. But I won't go there.

We re-signed with Sprint, got the nifty phones, got my mom the cell line last month. Remember? Well today the bill arrived in my inbox. Hah! My bill had been 121.99 per month for 4 phones + protection plans. I anticipated an increase of $22.00 for the new line and protection plan plus 3 activation fees at $18 each. Doing the math that is a bill of around 180.00. Imagine the look on my face when I see the bill in actuality and it's for 245.99!!

I'm not happy with Sprint. Not as much as I hate Qwest, but I really intensely dislike Sprint this morning. An hour on the phone and I'm still not sure it's fixed, however I am more or less stuck waiting until the correction arrives. I hate unspoken fees and believe them to be illegal. The courts agree with me and have been spanking Sprint for them lately. As soon as I told the gal on the phone that I had an invoice of the new plan in my hand and that her fees were not spelled out clearly on it she started removing them. I still have a $200 bill for this month and we'll see if I don't find where they're screwing me for that once i have the itemized list in my hand. I think she's full of sh*t but I can't prove it til I can see the numbers. Dammit.

Soon the lovely view from my office door will be obstructed by a new neighbors privacy fence. *sighs* The dudes building it (if you didn't grow up in C.O. you may not be aware that 'dude' is an insult. It is. Trust me.) were loud, obnoxious, smoking (all of this is less than 20 ft from my open office door), using choice language and generally being a pain in the ass. Realizing that they would prolly only be there for a few hours I closed my office door and the windows to keep the smoke out and the sound out and to keep my sanity and temper in.

That lasted all of 2 hours? When I was staring off into space between calls for a minute or three my eyes wandered around the soon to be blocked landscape and fell upon one of the yay-hoo's with a pocket knife in his hand carving into my new neighbors tree. Now as a rule I could give a poo less about defending my new neighbors from the litter those idiots were leaving all over their property but when he started defacing and carving into a living tree my top blew off. I opened my door, walked out on the lanai, and just stared at him for a minute or two.

That did zero good. So in a calm and somewhat teacher-ish voice I said, "How remarkable it is to find a man on the clock standing with one hand in his pocket and the other committing vandalism. Didn't I see your foreman around here just a minute ago?" The word foreman is in bold because I said that word louder and in the direction I assumed that man went. It worked. The foreman came striding around the house rather quickly, glanced at me, then pointed a finger at our vandal and pointed back to the front of the house. He seemed to be a man of few words.

So. Time to clock in, that's the news according to me for this morning. I'm crocheting, I'm cooking, I'm clothes shopping, I'm busier than a one legged man at a butt-kicking contest. Happy Hump Day Loves!

i think i'm old.

2008-08-01T06:35:00.000-07:00

We went to the concert last night. Erm. Lots of things wrong with that statement, lol. The traffic from the old Wal-mart to the fairgrounds was creeping slow. It was a 25 minute trip from the Fairgrounds main entrance to the parking lot. Approximately 250 yrds. I know, wow, huh? We missed the opening song/introduction, because by the time we parked, got our tickets into the fair etc . . it was already 10 minutes past 7. Knowing the floor of the auditorium would be packed with sweating tall people and not being an overly tall person myself, we decided to try to find a place in the upper seats.

By the time we found a couple (the concert was free and general seating, of course you had to buy a fair pass so 'free' is relative) the noise was sooooo starting to get to me. We were darn near against the back wall and the sound was so heavy and thick and conversely piercing and shrill that all i could think of was how deaf i was gonna be today. Don't laugh, but i put my fingers in my ears. No joke. For nearly the entire 2 hr show my fingers were in my ears. I could still hear everything fine! That level of sound was sooo toooo much -- I could feel the bass reverberating in my chest.

Not that Alice and Co. weren't rockin amazing, because they were! They put on a helluva show and you wouldn't have felt that you were at a cheap ass concert at all if they could have done it in the open air. That would have been better, but still, it was amazing.

Two down sides: the three froggin idiots sitting beside us that thought it was okay to toke up. Crikey that pissed me off. I tapped the dude on the shoulder and told him to stow that shit. He asked me quite seriously, 'why?' Heh. My response, "Because i don't need to be contaminated with your offensive little habit and you aren't going to sit here and foul my air." I said a few other things too but they aren't suitable for print. He said, "Fine, it's cool, here shake on it" I said a few more not printable things and refused to shake that nasty hand.

Then he and his little buddies (that's a misnomer, these ppl were in their late 40's, how freakin scary is that???) talked about me for a minute or two, pulled out their pipe and started passing it again. Hah! Bad move creepazoids. Rob and I popped up, went and flagged down a cop who was walking the gallery and dragged him over to my weed imbibing little losers.

That took care of that.

Downside #2, Rob's boss was sitting a couple rows above us. Ew. My man does not work for a good boss. He does work for a good company, but the actual manager leaves a bit to be desired. He's a verbally abusive fellow who likes to threaten every ones' jobs when he's feeling stressed. Just yesterday my dearest had communicated that very info to the managers' director. Chastisement had resulted. The manager may or may not have been smarting from his rebuke and Rob just didn't wanna see him at the concert.

The disaster was averted by moving to another section of the auditorium.

And I did take the video I promised -- its awful! -- but it's my second favorite Alice song.

Last Day of July

2008-07-31T07:04:00.001-07:00

There's a bunch of everyday stuff going one. Nothing that jumps out and says 'tell my story this time!' Just life stuff. Giving away old furniture -- because I inherited more old furniture -- find places for the furniture I'm keeping, find green ways to dispose of the furniture I'm not.

Sending kids to dentist appointments, making drs appointments for immunizations -- Boo starts high school in a month, time for the meningitis vaccine, hepatitis vaccine series and because she's a girl and because closing one door on cancer is never a bad thing, she'll get the HPV vaccine as well. Poor kid is in for a not fun visit to the Drs. Time for me to go in for another BRCA test and pap smear -- 6 months has flown by quickly, but even stranger to me is to say I've been cancer free for 1 year. Yay me!

I finished a side project from Etsy yesterday. Etsy Alchemy is pretty nifty. I found a fun project for me to do and make money doing it. Never a bad thing at all. I made a DVD slide show for a neat gal who wanted to surprise her sissy for her kiddo's 1st birthday. It turned out rather fabulous. I have a digital scrap booking program -- it's kinda nifty -- but I couldn't see any point in printing out 2 D pages that look like 3 D scrapbook pages. So I never used it for anything. Well, here comes this project -- a DVD slide show of 60-80 pictures set to music and playable on the TV. Kacey already had 30 bids on it when I read the post. But it struck me quite suddenly that this would be the way to make a slide show different and set it apart from the standard PowerPoint style that I've seen (and made) so often.

I bid ridiculously low, at about a 1/3 rd of what I should have -- I wanted to try out my idea! -- and Kacey, being a smart lady, jumped on my offer. The result is just fabulous if you ask me. It became a 125 image slide show with music and is a beautiful 20 minute journey from pregnancy through birth through the celebration with all the family and through the first year of this gorgeous little man's life.

It worked exactly like I wanted it too, using the digital pages as segues into each 'chapter' of the story. I like working for trade, that wasn't really an option on this project because with trade Etsy wouldn't have got it's cut. Trade is skill for skill plus some materials but they should balance out in the end. That's awfully hard to put a value on and let the source that brings the two crafts ppl together collect a cut. But! That doesn't mean that now that a connection has been made between two ppl with unique skills that each have something the other wants can't hook up outside of the meeting place and arrange a fair trade between them. So you know that's what we are talking about. Kacey makes rather loverly sparklies and I have a special sparkly in mind and she has her own twin bebbies coming up on a special birthday that she'd like DVD's for. Sounds just about right doesn't it?

But now I'm going back to perfecting that fingerless glove pattern. I've looked at lots of other patterns and so far nothing is really blowing up my skirt. I'm flat out not patient enough for knitting gloves and mucking about with round needles, I want to make pretty lacy gloves with crochet! I have to perfect the cuff first though. So back to the drawing board on that one.

I doesn't feel like the last day in July. It feels like the first day of September. Such a strange summer. Is Burning Man still on lughnasadh? Just checked and that's a nope, but it is still in August. My pagan heart knows it's the hol and I'll cook to celebrate it and talk about the season and what our Earth and our lives reflect during this time of year to my kids at the dinner table. We'll talk some more about the environment and what we do that is green and what the world is learning about being green even as our planet stands on the lip of the whirl pool. Wow. Touch maudlin there. True stuff all the same, but sadder than I want to be today.

We are headed off to the Alice Cooper concert tonight. Wow. A metal concert. It's been eons since we went to a concert where you didn't sit in a nice theater and watch the performers on stage but instead went to an open air fairgrounds and hoped you could sit close enough to see well but not so close that we're going to be deaf tomorrow. I'll see if my phone can take a decent movie and I'll post a bit of bootleg footage tomorrow.

Happy Thursday, enjoy your last day of July, and I'll talk to you again in August.

Her first cell phone.

2008-07-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

The adventure yesterday was heading off to Best Buy to get Boo her new phone. It was again that time of year (or every other year :P) when our current cell contract was up and at resigning we get the discounted rates on the newest phones. The week before last Rob and I had upgraded to the Palm phones. His the Treo, mine the Centro; and after play with them, customizing, learning all the new gadgets and widgets and getting them just 'so' the kids had made up their minds and both decided they too want the Centro. Not very interesting, or not so much that I'd sit and blog about. The nifty bit comes in what you stop to think about how many phones have accumulated over the years after the bi-yearly swap out.

Take a side step this direction for a minute. My Dad is getting ready to retire (yay Daddy!) and the company cell phone he's carried for years has been their excuse not to get their own phone. The co. has been perfectly okay with my folks need to use it for non company reasons on occasion so getting their own phone, in their very thrifty minds, was a waste of money. Being somewhat thrifty I could understand their point of view. However come January 1st the company phone will go away. Mom and Dad travel a great deal, by motor home, around the states when they are given leisure time. In the past several years the need to contact them on their co. cell phone as happened several times and mostly for truly urgent matters. The thought of them roaming the U.S. with their will'o'the'wisp itinerary and without any permanent form of communication (no lap top, no cell phone) makes this daughter nervous.

I had the potential available to me to add a 5th line -- and those with multi-phone families prolly already know that it's the 1st/2nd lines that you pay for, the rest are minimal in cost -- so I chose to activate it and put a phone on the plan for my parents. I was going to be green about it and recycle Boo's brand new replacement phone for their use. The kiddo had managed to kill hers deader'n'hell (i love that phrase and so rarely get to use it. you get to read it! lucky you) just before the contract was up and the new phones arrived. Being the thrifty daughter I had paid for the insurance to get the phone replaced if it died. It died, voila, new phone! So perfectly good, less than a month old, lets just add a 5th line and put that phone on that line. Nope, can't do it. Sprint, for a variety of truly silly reasons, doesn't' allow it. Instead they'll give us another brand new phone! Sheesh. I had to chuckle though and my parent's get a new phone and that's pretty okay.

Green note: Sprint does include little self mailer envelopes with their new phones, you pop your old phone into the envelope, drop it in the mail and send it back to Sprint. That company then decides if the phone is new enough to give you a little $$ back for the phone because it can be 'reconditioned' and resold or used as a warranty replacement piece and/or recycled altogether. I like that too.

S'kay, off we go to the 'rents to pass to them their new phone. Before, during and after the setup of this new line my mom had said 'but I don't want a cell phone'. When we got to the house she went so far as to take the box from my hand, set it on the kitchen table, toss off a quick 'thank you' and dive right into a conversation regarding some of my grandmother's things that she wanted me to have. I did not lick my grin right in front of her, but I was sorely tempted. I knew what she was about and I watched, patiently, while she got around to mastering her excitement of the new phone so she could play it off as not a big deal, oh kids you shouldn't have, what do I need a cell phone for?

Once she had her own excitement more or less squashed back in the box, she opened the phone up and asked calmly for me to walk her through the basic operation; how to add numbers, take pics and associate with numbers, learn the salient features of the gizmo. I waited for my moment, took her through the requisite goodies and handy doo-dads and then I asked the telling question:

"When I get home, I'll need to enter a name for this line on the account, that will be it's caller ID signature as well. What name shall I use? Dad's? Yours and Dad's?"

Her response: "Your Dad has his company cell phone, this ones mine, it should be my name."

Gotcha, Mom.

My Bobsy Twins

2008-07-21T06:23:00.000-07:00

Have a look at these two little girls. That picture is 8 yrs old now. They are young ladies headed off to high school in another month and still the best of friends. They've been together since they were 4 and 5 yrs old and I believe they'll still be together 50 yrs from now. The blonde one is the Boo - my baby.

The girls have been wandering around together since last Wednesday. First it was off camping at twin lakes with Kaile's grandparents, now they are here and wondering around Bend on foot, dressed like a couple refugees from a funeral gone wrong. They walked down to the cemetery for some communal time with the dead -- their words, not mine -- so tragic, so unique, so apart from other girls their age *snicker* and were so excited to come home and report to us that they had met other girls doing the same thing! Whodathunkit?? I prolly shouldn't be sarcastic about this, and I'm not, truly, it just cracks me up. I don't laugh at the girls though, no way, those sweet young ego's don't need me to bruise them. I do roll my eyes a lot though. And cover my mouth to hide the smiles.

Kaile is 5 foot nothing and Boo is 5'10" and they're walking around Bend, in July, wearing black dresses and black stockings and black heels and dripping in long silvery chains, black lace gloves and if hadn't put my foot down would be wearing Marilyn Manson style make up. My mom would have called it Mutt & Jeff -- but in those getup's it would be hard to decide who got to be Jeff. They used to spend their summers down on the river, rafting and swimming, every single day. (they're under the blue arrow) Now that's so babyish Mom! Sheesh. They used to ride their bikes everywhere but now that means a helmet is going to make their hair all icky. They walk, in heels, all over. If their ankles survive it, they'll be aces on a catwalk.

They still climb trees -- something about being in a tree looking out at the world is translatable from little girl monkey climbers to romantic, tragic, teens looking on the doom of the world waiting for Heathcliff to show up and take them away across ~~the heather~~ the sage. They still sleep in tents -- albeit til noon rather than being up at the crack of dawn. They still giggle and laugh like the babies they were. They used to chase mayflies across the summer twilight, hoping to see the very moment when the moonlight would touch them and turn them into faeries. Every hollow under a bush that might have sheltered a rabbit or a wood chuck was a gnome's home abandoned because people has discovered it. Then they graduated to playing Egyptian Princess and Priestesses and dreamed of dashing hero's waking them from their magical slumber -- that's when the dress-up got serious, lemme tell you! Their imaginations are amazing. Boo writes their stories into her journals, Kaile illustrates.

Pet parades, Christmas parades, Cascade Children's Festival -- all of these events have been attended by these two girls since they were born. I have a picture somewhere of Boo in her Papa Walt's arms, sound asleep, bundled up in a pink snow suit at 7 months old while 4 yr old JP and Rob and I watched the Christmas parade -- Boo and Kaile didn't know each other yet, that was still 4 yrs away, but in that pic is Kaile's papa holding her -- just a few people down from us.

These beautiful girls amaze me. Life amazes me. I can't wait til the Gothic princess look gives way to the next fad.

Happy Monday!

100 songs -- uncounted memories

2008-07-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

We watched several hours of 'top 100 songs of the 8o's on vh1 tonight. I knew every single one of them -- not that this is such a surprise, by the time your my age you prolly know several thousand songs. the thing that stands out though is that i have a memory for every single one. they say your sense of smell has the stronger memory association over hearing -- i have to disagree, when it comes to music; memories come pouring back into my mind with every chorus and guitar solo.

I do have a sense of smell, lucky me, and for certain scents there are strong memories that flood the mind so strongly that you feel as if you've relived that moment. Absolutely.

But -- when I hear Christopher Cross singing Sailing I see myself sitting on a pile of pillows at the foot of my bed, the window open and the birds singing on the fence. Me, feet up on the wall (where they weren't supposed to be) keeping my toes perfectly on the line between the pink and the purple stripes of the rainbow my mom had painted there for my birthday, reading Island of the Blue Dolphins. I looked up from the book a great deal to consider Karana's courage and to imagine what I would have done, had I been in her place, and to consider the odd shape of my toes, and the sounds of the birds and to pretend, while the song played, that I was on a catamaran, the salt spray of the water soaking my toes.

That's a music memory.

Crying my eyes out over a boy to Journey's Faithfully. Singing Scorpion's Rock You like a Hurricane at the top of my lungs at the 8th grade dance, hand in a cast, trying not to bash my partner accidentally with it. (Sadly, I did end up hitting somone with that chunk of plaster and breaking the cast for the third time. And the boy deserved it.) Being pissed off at my parents for some reason or another and listening to Pat Benetar's Love is a Battlefield.

I could go on and on, because the radio has been playing nearly everyday of my life, in the car, in the house, in my room, in my hand, and now on the internet. Sunday dresses and hymns. Tea and Mozart with my great grandmother. The player piano and Stephen Foster and sun through lacey curtains in my grandmother's house.

Singing Rainbow Connection to JP on nights when it was hard for him to fall asleep, Rob doing at least one verse with his goofy impression of Kermit's voice. Laughing with Boo on the front porch to Ice Cream and appreciating the appropriateness of that song while eating dreamsicles and swinging in the hot august evening.

There are songs that speak to me of the joys of summer and the stormy teens and the newness of being an adult and a wife and a mother . . .

I can laugh to hear some and cry for others. What would our world be like without music?

ahhhh spit!

2008-07-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

As promised here is the blog about the little gobs of spit that were all over my bushes and as it turns out, are prolly the culprit for my piebald looking front lawn. The pics didn't turn out all that great. I couldn't convince the camera that I really did want it to focus on the spittle not the branches. You'll just have to take my word for it that this stuff looks exactly like a group 10 yr old boys were standing around practicing how to hawk-a-lugie at the bushes. And as you can see by the above pic, my front yard is surrounded by them.

The info below is from a website about the critters. Their pictures are also better.

Description:

Adult spit bugs are shaped like small frogs and can hop hence being dubbed froghoppers. They are usually brown in colour but can be green in many parts of Canada. Their eggs are small and white and laid in rows.

Spit Bug Habitat:

They are most prevalent in grassy fields found all over North America. They prefer grassy areas but will attack most plants.

Lifecycle:

Spit bugs overwinter as eggs in stems and garden debris. The eggs need high humidity to hatch so they will hatch quite early in the south. The nymphs climb up the stems and cover themselves with a protective spit. Female spit bugs lay their eggs again in the summer and the cycle begins again.

Diet and Damage:

Spit bugs feed on mostly on grass but many ornamentals, flowers, peas, strawberries, alfalfa, shrubs and trees can be affected. Grass turns brown and dies. Plants become deformed. They appear in mass numbers in June and through to September. Adults can cause just as much damage as the nymphs. Adult spit bugs feed mostly in the early mornings and hide in the heat of the day.

Controlling spit bugs:

Use

Liquid Rotenone/Pyrethrinor Pyola™ Insect Spray Insecticidal Soap Spray also works rather well on spit bug nymphs. Destroy them before they become adults!

Be careful with Pyola™… although it is a natural organic pesticide derived from chrysanthemum flowers, it is what is known as a “broad spectrum” pesticide and will also kill beneficial insects as well. It simultaneously attacks adult insects, larvae and eggs and can be used as a dormant or growing season spray.

Water Spray:

A strong spay of water on shrubs and ornamentals will control spit bugs as they don’t inflict much damage on mature plants.

Hand Pick (wear gloves):

Where you see a mass of spittle you know there is a bug. Remove the bugs and drop them in alcohol.

Dethatch Your Lawn:

In the spring dethatch and fertilize your lawn. This should keep your spit bug population down to a minimum as they need moist humid conditions to survive.

Dormant Oil Spray:

Apply the spray in the fall… and this will prevent any overwintering spit bug eggs from hatching.

**************

K, back to me again -- so I'm trying the spray the critters off the bushes with a strong jet of water method. We'll see how that works. Rob is also using the fertilizer that has the insect control in it. Not my fav as it may kill off some beneficial bugs but we'll see.

a very nice thank you, but no thank you

2008-07-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

so i didn't get it. i'm bummed. the team lead said some very nice things about my interview but i didn't make the cut based on the department i'm coming from. she wanted someone already steeped in her department to promote from, rather than take on someone who would have to learn it, then teach it. so, that makes sense, but i'm still bummed out about it.

dammit.

i'll stay a telecommuting csr for some time to come. i have this whole bug spittle thing to tell you about but i'm gonna do it later. mebbe tomorrow. it's ewwy and funny and a little adventure and educational opportunity in my own front yard. tomorrow!

of Movies and Morals . . .

2008-07-14T06:28:00.000-07:00

"You can purchase anything off the Internet except common sense," Harrison said. "A venomous snake isn't a pet. You don't play with it. If you do, you're an idiot." -- great quote from a news story this morning. Sorta starts the day with the right tone.

It is Monday dammit. The weekend was productive and relaxing. Wow, that's a nifty balance to achieve. It looked like your average Joe & Jane American weekend. Yard work, housework, laundry, shopping and then a treat -- we went to the movies.

We chose to see 'Wanted'. James McAvoy, Angie Jolie, Morgan Freeman. Violent. That's the first key word for that lil picture. Almost gruesomely so. Almost. Because the director has the knack of making the violence still resemble the graphic artist original frame. He slowed the film down to almost a still picture to retain that single image of gore and violence rather than keeping it in constant motion and flinging buckets of blood in your lap.

We took Boo. We knew it was violent, we knew that it was language heavy, we didn't know that one of the first images on the screen would be some bare ass brawny guy shagging a blonde on a table and the only bit of cloth covering the action would be brawny-n-brainless's shirt tail. Vigorous shagging. I turned and looked at Boo's face and saw her eyes get saucer big and then she averted her eyes. She knew 14 wasn't ready for such things.

Course, after watching that movie Rob and I both think we should have taken the R rating a little more seriously. Throwing fuck around every other sentence didn't bug us. Fuck is one of my favorite words. But -- the sheer brutality of some scenes was almost too much for me. In retrospect they made sense to the story -- it's just bloodier than I would volunteer to watch in a movie. The recent spate of torture-horror like Saw I, II, III is just not my cuppa tea.

This wasn't horror, but the casual and ruthless disregard for humanity --- hmm, not so much. That said, the story was good. James McAvoy is a hella good actor that I look forward to seeing more of in the years to come. Morgan was, as always, fabulous to watch. Angelina -- we both thought she was too thin and drawn looking. That may have been the movie, but was more likely that this film was made shortly after she lost her mom. She's very waifish. Not at all like the glowing healthy pregnant lady she is today -- er was, she had the babies Saturday. The end was unexpected, but I won't spoil it for you.

Another thing I didn't like before I say a few nice things. I'm not entertained by the casual disregard for life. Especially when it destroys the life or lives of those that are powerless to defend themselves. For me that is defined primarily as children and animals. Even when the destruction is cgi and not very much not real, that someone else finds it perfectly acceptable to turn a living being into a bomb offends me. The 'it's just a story' defense is bullshit. That a mind can do it on the screen is telling tens of thousands of others that it's okay to do. Maybe only 1 in 10,000 will believe it's okay, but that one will now go out and find an M80 and stuff it down a living beings' throat to see what will happen. That offends me.

- - -

Wow. It took me a minute to really think about the things I liked about the movie. The lead character, Wesley Gibson (McAvoy) is really the saving grace. It's his story and he is a likable guy who during the majority of the movie is someone who grabs your empathy. He begins as so many cliches' begin as the likable but submissive guy who is wandering through life letting the world screw him over. He's too submissive, suffers panic attacks and if he weren't narrating the story for you you'd prolly see another 20 something slacker.

Then the extraordinary happens and he is lifted out of his hum drum. He finds out he's special. I did like that he rejected the reality of his uniqueness and left the welcoming arms of the Assassins, went home, slept on it and then the next day tried to live his everyday existence again while the knowledge of his potential percolated through his brain. His break out moment is one of my favorite scenes.

The special effects with vehicles rocked my socks off. There is a scene midway through the movie with a mustang, a corvette and a sunroof. That's it though. The plot isn't terribly original. It could have reached little further into history for it's backbone and didn't. I have know idea why. But really people, if you're going to find a secret language in the warp and the weft of the fabric then you should go for the obvious mythological connection and draw the circle completely. Clotho spins the thread, Lachesis measures the thread, Atropos cuts the thread -- that makes sense and upholds a lovely comic book tradition of throwing good solid literary/mythology into the story to help tell the story without having to write a book of background. Not this story. "A thousand years ago a group of weavers discovered a secret language in the cloth." Hmph. The language is binary code. Double hmph. I will say their attic room that stores the loom and the loom itself were gorgeous. Anyone who works with cloth will appreciate the grand scale of the thing.

Over all the movie was a C+. There were too many elements that smacked up against my personal mores for me to be able to sit back and enjoy it. I do like a fast and violent movie, but I don't like torture and I don't like even imaginary abuse of animals or children.

K -- more later -- time for work kids. I'll add on to this over the day.

Cheesy Sappy Happy Web Find

2008-07-10T13:38:00.000-07:00

I can cry over things that touch my heart. those happy tears that leak outta your face for no particular reason than something just touched you. That's me. This did that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

This is the guy. Em & Lo said he's a goofy guy but by the end of watching the vid you'll kinda wish he was your goofy guy. I like my guy just fine, but as guy's go, this one is pretty nifty.

Wishy Washy

2008-07-08T07:17:00.000-07:00

I still haven't heard anything. I sent a polite note to the hr staffing specialist who was recruiting for the position to find out if a decision is forth coming. That wasn't exactly fruitful either. Bleh. But! I will post here about 15 minutes after I find out one way or the other. I figure that's how long it will take me to start breathing/stop sighing and call Rob and tell him.

I'm all bloated and emotional this week, not a good time to be anxious about anything, it makes me more waspish than usual. Post-hysterectomy the symptoms of menses are supposed to abate. translation: take out the girl bits; you're not supposed to be a cranky bitch. I kept my girls (ovaries) though, and they are the major hormone producer in my body and they still party once a month and turn me into a psychotic would-be-axe murderer. I don't actually own an axe -- this is a blessing.

it's supposed to be hot as Hades again today -- and once more we found other things to accomplish than installing the a/c's. Truth told, Rob's put in so much OT in the past two weeks that I dread asking him to do anything too strenuous or not fun on the weekends. Lifting one of those units to chest height and then climbing a ladder 3 or so feet up and then setting it on a shelf in a windowsill -- that's strenuous. I jokingly suggested he bring home one of his forklifts from work, he gave me the stink eye. I dunno if that was because I was implying he wasn't strong enough or if the idea was just too ridiculous for words. *sigh*.

I've been cruising the web this morning looking for some Spanish recipes to try out. I really enjoy Mediterranean foods and have been working my way around that sea, trying a bit from each culture. Tapas/mezze is the best summer style meal there is, in my not so humble opinion. Are you a seasonal cooker? I think, to a certain extent, we all are. There are just some dishes that make better sense in warm weather than cold and vice versa.

I will invest more time in long preparation times in the winter than I will in the summer and the oven running all day long makes the house smell fabulous. Fresh breads, slow cooked roasts of whatever, stews, soups -- all winter foods. Summer, I want olives and tomatoes and cucumbers and zucchini and slow-n-low pulled pork and peppers and greens, greens, greens. Hummus is the major lunch condiment in this house in the summer. Hummus and focaccia. And olives. And tomatoes. I just ate a bagel and had a cuppa and here I am talking about food and I’m getting all munchy again.

Anyway, back to Spanish food. I have cooked north African dishes, couscous heavy, goat cheese and onions and flat breads, oh my, this spring and moved on to turkey and Greece in early summer then I made a nice goulash -- very middle Europe, very paprika and onion and thyme with a good smattering of oregano, but then -- I looked at all that lovely dark red smoked paprika and thought -- saffron and paprika, such Spanish flavors. I want Spanish food! But ya know what, when I went and read the recipes I found that I cook quite a few dishes that have a Spanish origin. Paella, tortilla, stuffed peppers. So the challenge was to find new twists or classic preparations that I haven't made before. That’s proving to be challenging. It also means ordering some classic (read imported) cheeses and meats from Spain or learning to make them myself.

This is when I bitch about gas prices, it's driving up the costs of so many things and getting to indulge in food delights is getting to be a luxury rather than a fun treat. The difference between the two; I can afford treats occasionally, luxuries are not needed except on rare occasions. I know that the economy is going to beat home how hard the depression was on my grandparents, it may not get that bad, but then for some, it already is.

The drive behind my desire to move upward and onward through my company is driven primarily by money. i want so much of it that i don't have to worry so much about how bad it's going to get before it gets better. the last big recession lasted a decade. I was a kid at the time, but I remember all too clearly how my parents worried, how the choices my dad made weren't for job happiness but only for security and money. That i'm feeling the same way and starting to think like a squirrel brings home to me exactly what we are facing in the next 5+ years and it's flat out froggin scary.

It's the little things that I've come to expect and enjoy that I need to rethink. Do I need that brand new hard back book at $20 or can I borrow it from the library and buy it when it hits the second hand book store in a 6 months for $6? Can I drop $30 on a breakfast out for Rob and I every Saturday or do we stay home and have a bowl of cereal spend the other $25 on gas? Do I hand my kiddo $20 bucks for the movies and treats or do I suggest she make microwave popcorn and watch a rental?

Here's a thought for you -- Boo starts high school in the fall and that means homecoming, winter formal and prom dresses. Mom made ours. They were gorgeous -- but you can't make a dress for what you can buy it for these days and I have no idea how expensive formals are. heh, I'm bitching without purpose now.

Two kids heading to college, one now, the other in 4 yrs. Earning enough for our retirement (hah!) and to assure that there is money to take care of JP after we are gone. ack! this blog is turning maudlin. I told you that I'm cranky.

Time for work. Have a nice day m'dears.

there is a word to describe it! ha! I knew there had to be!

2008-07-07T06:19:00.000-07:00

I know you will recognize the events I'm about to describe.

You're sitting in the car with your best guy or gal and the radio is turned up because it's a particularly rocking song and you're both singing along with the music -- fairly loudly -- and all of a sudden your buddy sings something that makes absolutely no sense. None.

Examples:

wrong lyric: She really don't like it -- stomp the cat box, stomp the cat box
right lyric: Sharif don't like it -- rock the casaba, rock the casaba--the clash
wrong lyric: there's a bathroom on the right
right lyric: there's a bad moon on the rise--credence clearwater revival
wrong lyric: roll the bottle bounce come and save my coke
right lyric: the bible belt will come down, save my soul--john cougar mellencamp

But seriously, how many others can you think of? I can think of lots, mostly because I've heard them while singing along to the radio with my Man. K, you know he's over my shoulder pointing out a few of my own more interesting lyrical blunders. It is a universal happenstance for a radio driven culture, we bang up the lyrics when the lead singer warps a word or the guitar matches his voice too clearly and you lose the enunciation in the riff. We all do it. Rob just does it more than me :) and I write a blog and he doesn't so I get to tell the story my way, so there :P

Anyway! The whole point is that in the next edition of Merriam-Websters dictionary of the American language there will appear a word that describes this very event! (not the blog, the lyric blunders) Are you ready for it? Drum roll please . . .

mondegreen: it describes words mistaken for other words. A mondegreen most often comes from misunderstood phrases or lyrics. It comes from an old Scottish ballad in which the lyric "laid him on the green" has been confused over time with "Lady Mondegreen."

Isn't that fabulous? Kinda starts my day off in the right direction, lemme tell you. I also found a website devoted to mondegreens (I'm gonna have to figure out a way to work this into casual conversation today, hehe, and use it appropriately but not describe its' meaning at all and see what the listener says. what a fun prospect!) that come up with the actually stories that go with the recognition of the wrong lyric being used.

As in; "I was on a date with my new boyfriend when he sang the most unforgivable lyric - - j geils bands Centerfold does not have a line that goes my anus is the centerhole."

That one almost killed me i laughed so hard. The list of misheards for Bohemian Rhapsody could be a book all by themselves.

I start the day with a new word in my vocabulary -- and it's such a practical word -- it's gonna be a good day!

Ballooning

2008-07-05T07:48:00.000-07:00

So Rob did get up at o'dark early as is usual for him on a Saturday morning. Last night he promised if he got up before the sun he would wake the Boo and me and we'd all trot down to the Stop n Go and watch Kent's lift off. It wasn't a huge crowd -- mebbee 200?

Here's some pics:

Look at Me

2008-07-04T15:32:00.001-07:00

I'm updating the look of the blog. New banner, new links, new info shared . . . the bright neon was getting to me. I don't know diddly about script. I took apart someone else's script to learn how this is done. I couldn't write this from scratch, no way, i'm a wysiwyg kinda gal, but i can edit the hell outta something that's already made and make it look like I did it! (except photo/image creation -- i can do that, kinda.)

Oh yah, the whole bbq on the 4th thing? we are being lazzzzeeeeeeeeee . . . we'll slap some steaks on the barbie around 8-ish, each ice cream around 9-ish and the teenage girl-child will talk us into the fireworks about 9:55-ish.

I hope your day is filled with the same simple pleasures or if you run more to par-tay that you have a blast with that too!

Pretty Chuckalicious

2008-07-03T15:55:00.000-07:00

I giggled.

Realistic Hollwood Sex.

Still no patio . . .

2008-07-03T06:23:00.000-07:00

. . . yup. We haven't built it. The heat just keeps sapping the energy right out of us. We are early morning risers and you'd think we'd get up and do it before the heat pours on too strong but we keep finding other things to do before the rest of the house wakes. We're working on the blue ribbon for procrastination!

Saturday we woke up with the best of intentions -- then got immediately sidetracked by some much needed adult time. After taking our showers we were both pretty hungry and darned if a breakfast at Black Bear didn't sound tasty. Kids were still asleep so after a post it note to the fridge off we went. By the time that lovely repast was complete it was already heating up good but we thought we'd head over to Home Depot and look at stone (before going home to get the rig to haul it in, because, dummy me, we took the scooby!). Well, World Market was opening and they had a sign out about nice patio furniture, and you know darn well that if you have a patio, you need patio furniture! I bought chairs. Nice wicker chairs with the fat-puffy cushions, a perky yellow and orange to offset the sage green color of chairs themselves.

And of course we were going to grill for supper so we started talking food and Rob suggested we grill because it was already too late in the day to do slow-n-low so off we headed to Wal-mart for the propane. By the time we got home from shopping it was already hot-hot-hot-hot-hot (imagine Bill Engvall chanting that, it works better)

So . . . . .

We invited Tory & Dawn, Rob's best friend and his wife, who also happen to be the kids godparents, over for supper. It's a very family gathering and as usual what was supposed to be 3-4 hrs of dinner and conversation turned into 8 hrs and it was the wee hours before we finally got to bed -- so that shot Sunday morning all to hell for building the patio too. We slept in. Kinda of a shocker really, to sleep in to almost 7!

No patio last weekend. Think it will happen this weekend? Maybe. I dunno really, but it's a definite maybe!

I woke up and it was August . . .

2008-06-30T06:14:00.000-07:00

Global warming is changing the world awfully fast and I thought I knew it was here and accepted it's impact on my life. I thought I wouldn't sit around and bitch like ppl did over the cold weather spring. Well. I lied. I woke up to August on Friday morning and thought -- an unusually warm day, but there are bound to be a few. I woke up on Saturday and my brain was going through it's August list of weather proofing projects:

plan meals for grill and cold salad sides
drag out a/c's for bedroom and office (if you have central air I don't want to know!)
open house wide open at 5 am and with fans cool it down as much as possible so that
at 9 am when temps outside equal temps inside, shut house down
zealously guard against undue opening of exterior doors and power use that produces heat
drink gallons of ice tea and water

I'm sitting here today regretting not running to home depot like we had planned yesterday. I need another shelf and couple of brackets to mount the a/c in the office space. Bleh, dammit. I may melt into a puddle of sweat today while taking calls. I'm giving some thought to going into the office for a couple of days next week just to avoid the heat!

On the other hand, I may hear in the next couple of days that I should come into the office anyway. There may be a job offer on the table. Keep your fingers crossed!

Pip

2008-06-27T06:40:00.000-07:00

he's in the title of the blog and he's my profile pic but i haven't talked about him very much. he's my companion and shadow. he's 7 years old now and getting pretty gray in the muzzle, my Pip. he was supposed to be Boo's friend and companion. she was 6 about to turn 7 and her best friend had just moved back to the coast and she was a very lonely little girl. she wanted a friend who wouldn't leave.

we got Pippin. born on spring equinox 2001, my little dog had issues from the beginning. he's neurotic and snarly and no amount of obedience training did anything to help. we finally got the Boo a little Maltese (yap-yap) and pip was my problem. he was 50% good dog and 50% monster. the one opinion that everyone had about him experts and dog lovers alike, was that something traumatic had happened to him when he was a puppy before we got him and some how we just didn't make it better.

but patience and time did make it better. better enough that he's 98% good dog. i still don't trust him with strangers and the kids know not to trust him too far either. a few ppl have asked me why we didn't just have him put down or taken to the pound. i can't do that. he's my guy and even if he's moderately neurotic and temperamental it's not his fault he's that way. just don't walk up on him while he's sleeping --- and he sleeps in his own space out of the living space we inhabit -- he is paranoid when abruptly awakened. that's the demon dog.

lets talk about this morning. you know I've been slacking off the walking. pip has suffered for it. have a look at the pictures from this morning as i was checking email, doing bills, lounging in my jams. you can see exactly what he's telling me can't you? So i did get off my butt, throw on the sauconies and put a wiggle in it. we walked the larkspur trail, down the irrigation ditch to the senior center and back -- about 45 mins of walking so nearly 3 miles when you count doggy stops for business. And a couple of pictures. he loved it of course.

we stopped at a spot were the water fell over into a little pool and had a look -- sorry no pics of the look into the pool, it was too shady -- but i spotted tadpoles and snails and water skippers in the water. pip had a look and couldn't figure out what the big deal was, and off we went -- cause if you can't smell it, what's the point??

Meeting other dogs on the trail is a treat -- we all need a social life -- we met a fellow and he's Siberian husky with the startling-ice-blue-eyes and had a sniff and a wag. we heard doves cooing, jays yakking and even saw a late to bed bunny. all were creatures to smile at but pips is not a 'chaser' unless the object crossing his path is a cat or a squirrel. even the squirrel ls are more something to watch than chase to him if they happen to be across the stream. my guy hates water. river dog he is not.

I really had no idea that was a peculiarity of the species when we got him. beagles loathe water. their skin is hyper sensitive to it and you can damage their skin with bathing too frequently. the dread lock shampoo? the dry powdery stuff? that works okay, he still doesn't like it but its better than risking my fingers getting him wet or drugging him to accomplish it. that feels like cheating and he's not happy with me over it. if he's been worked too hard --a 5+ mile walk at a good clip (4 mph) will usually heat him up enough that he'll stand in the creek or river while he has a drink but that's gotta be a HOT dog.

When we got home he laughed and laughed. Pip had got his way. Mom off her butt, out the door, walking with her guy down the dirt trail, greeting the morning and seeing what was around the corner and over the hill. How much better can a dog's life get? It was a good morning wake-up time to be together, just me and my dog.

You spin me right round, baby, right round, like a record . . .

2008-06-25T06:08:00.000-07:00

I've been MIA for a bit -- no excuses, the world has been spinning on her axis and I've been spinning in my own chaotic little orbit. Graduation is done. The much anticipated conclusion to another event is done. I had my job interview yesterday and that is done but boy howdy you know I'm still sweating it until they tell me it's mine. We still haven't built the patio -- the rain keeps falling on weekends, what's up with that? But now, we've had one shining weekend and another expected this weekend so we are planning to get the materials. Time to get the Boo into an orthodontist, schedule all those dreaded but necessary dentist visits for the rest of us and time to plan vacation! Holy cow. That entire list would look even more intimidating if it was bulleted but seeing it all clumped together doesn't lessen the sense of urgent now to get it done.

I have to talk about the interview and the position. I want this. Sadly, I've applied and interviewed for other internal positions and watched them slip through my fingers to other folks. Sometimes I agreed they were the better candidate for the job and sometimes I knew it was office politics that got them the position not their skills or abilities. It can make for a discouraging and unpleasant association with the whole process. But i'm a stubborn thing. Never say die. It has absolutely nothing with optimism. Stubborness wins through due to persisitance in my experience much more successfully than being optimistic.

Rob is telling me that being sure of the positive outcome, no matter your motivation, is optimism.

Damn.

I can't argue with that. However after 12 rejections in 4 yrs you sort of feel less than sunshiny about the whole thing.

I haven't applied for this position before, don't get me wrong, this is the first and only time I've tried for this position in this department. It's a corporate trainer position. A teacher of new hires. It involves a lot of travel -- that's the only part I'm waffling about. I can commit to doing this and doing this very well, thank you, but I'd be lying if i didn't say that I'm worreid about whether or not the kids and dogs would still be free to roam and the spouse wasn't insane and dribbling in a corner when I get home on weekends.

The interview was supposed to be an hour, 30 minutes on a training session of my devising and presentation, and 30 mins of Q&A. I concluded the training at the 25 min mark and asked for questions from the panel ( 3 people, the team lead, and two other trainers). I had prepared 45 mins worth of training material, i'd rather have plenty to talk about rather than not enough. So at that the time i asked for their questions -- the team lead motioned me to keep going if i was able. I was and I did. I did the full 45 minute training and then we got down to the Q&A. That was 45 mins as well -- and not because I'm a long winded kid, but rather that they wanted to talk about style and philo as regards how to train and where the most effective techniques and supports get results from students, be they new hires or refresher training on existing employees.

Doing the math, what was supposed to be an hour long interview became an hour and a half. When I left the interview room the panel stayed to discuss their observations and talk about how they reacted to me and what they thought of my abilities, my history, my answers . . .

I went on back to my desk and gathered up my stuff, stopped at my team lead's cubie and talked to her about the experience, got some reassurance from her -- she's a great person to have on your side -- the woman exudes confident support -- and started to walk out of the building. I met up with another TL and the gal at HR at the front of the wing and in the process had to pass the interviewers in their conference room again -- still talking about me, 20 minutes later.

I visited with the TL and the HR gal for another 15 or so mins and then we all walked out together, passing for the last time, the folks in the conference room and they were still there! Wow. Is that a good sign? I very much want it to be but I don't know. I want this position.

Rob dreamed about it last night, dreamed that I wasn't making it home on weekends. I had to laugh and share my comment about insane hubby dribbling in the corner. He gave my hind end a swat and kissed me and left without any other comments. This is going to take more talking. I know he supports me but we've been decades together as a functioning team -- this is a big deal.

I was in a cocoon of stress and worry from June 1st til yesterday. I’m still living with a little anxiety but the stress and worry are gone. I know I’ve talked about this before, but the emotional highs and lows make it very hard for me to consistently meet personal goals, like walking 4 miles a day. Like staying in my calorie counts. Like watching the budget and saving like I should. Cracks me up, my mom would say – get on it little girl, you know what you need to do, so do it. Except when I’m feeling low then she’ll commiserate and not lay on the ‘so do it’ line. My gf tells me that this is a sign of depression (erm, yah, got that dearie) and that Rx is the way to handle it – I’m opposed. Lots of reasons, but the root is that I need to exercise and eat healthy and when I do those things regularly and consistently I’m not near as wild on the ups and downs.

The downs have been more extreme than a person normally addresses. Grief is a hard and horrible emotion, add a little guilt, stir in a skin itching anxiety and it would put anyone off their stride. Or make them more obsessive about it I suppose. I hide. I bury my nose in books and hide. I eat easy to make carb and fat loaded foods high on starch and dairy and low on fiber and fresh veggies. I skip walking. The doctor said no running she didn’t say skip walking.

So! Time to get busy in a positive way and to find my smile and to put a wiggle in it.

Heh, I’ve said that a lot in the past two years. I’m done with bad shit for a while! I am going to get this job! I am going to get a nice raise! I am going stick with my list of goals and make them happen and make them happen well. I am going to get excited about enjoying the next two months of summer. I am going to book our honeymoon! Nearly 20 yrs later we are finally going to have a honeymoon. That’s a story for another day – but way back when we shook the hand the Justice of the Peace (she never did manage to get Rob’s name right. She called him in order: Bo, Bert and Bob) and went back to work. We are taking a trip to very nice Hotel up in Astoria; we are spending 5 days alone. Rob and me. Alone. Just us. By ourselves. Wow.

I have a positive list to accomplish in the next couple of months and we are going to do it – smiling and happy, dammit. With a lot of laughter and hugs and love.

See me wiggling? That’s ‘cause I’m going to be an optimist!

crunch, crunch, does cartilage taste good with ketchup?

2008-06-03T19:12:00.000-07:00

So the bone doc weighed in on the knee thing after looking at the see-through pics. I do not have any meniscus injuries -- yay!!! I do have bursitis. Well, ew, but fixable. I do have arthritis. Well dammit, but truth told already knew that. I don't have any cartilage left under my knee caps. I did not know that. Wow. No more running -- dammit. No high impact activity on the knees, dammit. Low impact only, treadmill is okay, no incline. No stairs. Stationary bike is okay, water aerobics (ewww) is okay.

Over all I'm relieved, if a little wild-eyed, over the news. Turns out it's genetic, I was doomed (predestined) to have this happen. I'll prolly have to have knee replacement eventually. I have a fancy script for a summer of PT so I can bulk up the muscles in my thighs the right way to take the strain off my knees.

I wanted a new bike this summer, but I really thought it'd be a Schwinn. I don't know do-dah about stationary bikes and only a vague idea that this is what the 'spinning' classes were all about, right?

I'm throwing it out there kids, any thoughts on the stationary bike? Spinning classes?