Tranquility found, and lost

For Solstice this year we revamped our annual trip to 'the roundhouse' at Umpqua Lighthouse State Park and opted for a shorter stay at a cabin at Silver Falls, slightly closer to home.   The cabin was cozy and warm enough, the surroundings very green and wet.

We had a couple campfires, which Lawrence prides himself on building and lighting all on his own, ate smores, drank cocoa, built a gingerbread house and sleigh, tried out storebought summer sausage (yuck!) and had nuemrous fast paced battles involving legos, dominoes and uno cards, separately and in combination.

Perhaps the best part of the trip was that I was completely out of phone range.  No calls, texts, e-mail or quick access to google.  Hell, the CLOCK on my phone didn't even work.  So, we rambled the muddy trails, hung out, and generally did nothing fancy for 2 full days.  Bliss.

Fifteen miles back toward civilzation, the phone clicked to life and completely freaked out.  A friend who had been frantically trying to contact me, tons of spam e-mail and of course Mike cursing that the mail key was lost.  Pop-up after pop-up, ending with the comical "vacation day" calendar reminder.

Real life is no fun.  I want to be the camp host at a state park.  I can do educational crap during the busy season, learn to wield a chain saw in the fall, and drive a spiffy golf cart around to clean the bathrooms.  I'll get a phone card and check in with a message service now and then, or go 'into town' on Thursdays to use the in-ter-net somewhere.  I dream of a life that moves slower.

A world without computers

This morning I came to work an hour early because I had so many files to process today and new I'd never get them done in between and around my 22 student appointments. When I arrived the database wasn't accessible, slowly I realized that all things OSU-online were non-functional.  After about an hour, word came out that there had been a fire in a steam tunnel and some services were down.  An hour after that it was confirmed that a dozen buildings on campus have no power and so classes and work in those buildings were cancelled.  No luck, my building has power and heat, I gotta stay.

But I can't do much.  All the databases are offline as well as the OSU main website.  Its surreal how much people are freaking out not knowing what to do.  They say that all non-essential personnel should leave at noon, but the only people here are me and a receptionist - all the bosses are already on vacation or called in sick....I don't feel very essential.....

The time is definitely come....

On Wednesday I went to OHSU and had my pre-surgery appointment to have my eyes restraightened.  I was worried that maybe I was just being vain and maybe it wasn't such a big deal that people can't tell when I am looking at them.

Until today. 

I had an appointment with a student whose eyes are turned as bad or worse than mine.  It actually hurt my face as we both constantly tried to readjust our gaze based on where we kinda maybe thought the other person was looking or thought we were looking.  By the end of the appointmentwe were both concentrating really hard on his file and never looking up.  If I had a fun accent, it could have been a Monty Python sketch - seriously.

Anyone else?

Ever have a conversation with someone after they walk away just think 'what a bitch'.  That's pretty much my office interaction in a nutshell.

Happy November

Wake up!  It's the first Saturday of the month and time for free kid's workshop projects at Home Depot.  today was an actually functional spice rack.  Follow that up with Lawrence's bowling league, haircuts, grocery shopping and I'm so ready to make the snacks and settle in to watch some Beaver Football.  Sometimes I think my hours at work are actually my 'downtime'.

The weather is absolutely amazing for November.  Some rain but not enough to interfere with getting outdoors, temps so mild I haven't bought the winter coats yet, and gorgeous reds, yellows and oranges everywhere.

The other day I went to the Tualatin National Wildlife refuge and walked their trails.   I was stopped to look at a little bird that actually runs up the tree trunk when all of a sudden a breeze came and I was caught in a shower of falling leaves. I half expected fairies to come out and say hello, it was just a magical moment.  It was completely unplanned and I couldn't take people out to that spot to experience it, proof that I need to get outside more.  Something about trees and water sets me at peace.  I guess I need actual quiet around me to find it within me.

Halloween beckons

It's the most wonderful time of the year!  I love Halloween, and not just because there is a flood of orange and black paraphenalia just in time for Beaver football home games.  Halloween rocks.

A couple years back I did pictures of me and Lawrence in costume and sent them out with 'Holiday Greetings'.  Nothing to rattle my family like stealing their idea of sending an update but including it in a card covered in skulls instead of baby Jesus, and with a photo where we are almost unrecognizable.  Put that on your damn fridge!

This year we are Pirates and Mike was full on in the action.  We did so many awesome shots I had a hard time choosing only FIVE to include in the envelopes (which will be late, since they'll be mailed in the morning).  I'm sporting a black eye, bling, and a leather lace-up bodice, while Mike has a Jack Sparrow wig and a bottle of rum  (mmmm, Jack Sparrow....).  Lawrence of course is too cute for words.

So, another successful season is coming to a close and I am saddened by how short it is, but gladdened that the sales will start soon and I can get those spooky skeleton lights I've had my eye on for half price.  :)   Candy, pretending to be something totally socially inappropriate and it being perfectly fine for Lawrence to jump out and scare total strangers (which he does all year anyway).  I love Halloween.

Kharmic grumblings

I am stuck in a viscious cycle of my own creation.   It's been ongoing for about 6 years now, a full cycle takes about 12 months.

A few weeks ago we entered the go to h-e-double hockey sticks stage (again).  Night before last I had the most horrible, vivid, and exhausting dream that Henry killed himself , ostensibly over not being able to see Lawrence, and then I had to deal with all the drama.  I 'woke up' as if I had never slept and decided it would be better to extend the offer of a visit and let him ruin his relationship with Lawrence himself, no matter how much I wanted to protect Lawrence from his manipulative and dishonest behavior.  I have enough righteous hatred in me, but I lack the pure selfish mean-spiritedness to say he can't see a kid as wonderful as Lawrence.   Of course, like the ass he is, there has been no response to my offer.

I don't want a time machine to change the past, I just want an eraser to take out parts of the present.

Too young to feel so old

My body is falling apart!  Once again I am crippled with back and neck pain.  Good to know that a month worth of physical therapy will buy you exactly 3 months of mobility.  Grrr.  Hurts to sit, stand, sleep, walk, hell it is even uncomfortable to take a deep breath.

Not fair!  I never skateboarded or bungee jumped or did any crazy extreme activties, I'm a bookworm for goodness sake. 

Doctors are no help, gonna have to find myself a black market vicodin dealer...think they take insurance?

Not even worth the dollar

Watched MacGruber tonight from Redbox.  It sucked. It sucked so bad I don't even want to talk about it anymore.

Except to say that Val Kilmer has gotten incredibly fat.

SNL that was actually funny

So, one of the comments was

"Rad, rad, rad.  Rad to the nth power".  This must be an instant geek classic.

http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2010/09/jimmy-justin-timberlake-the-roots-a-history-of-rap/

The snuggle factor

A confession.  Lawrence still sleeps with us in 'the big bed'.  Not every night, but regularly.  He considers it his greatest accomplishment of the day if I say "now go up to bed" and he crashes on Mike's pillow.

Mike is a great sport about this, about everything really.  So this morning on the busride in I heard a woman complaining that her 5 year old had crawled into bed with her last night and I began to worry again that there is something 'wrong' with how my little family does things.  A couple years ago one of those advice columns in the newspaper even suggested that there was probably something wrong with a mother (as in sexual deviancy) who would let a child past toddler age sleep with her and her husband.

But its so sweet to wake up with little arms around your neck, even if he is a sweaty blob.  For me it is just comfortable to fall asleep knowing that everything I love is in one room, safe and quiet. Maybe I need to move to some 'less civilized' culture where you can breastfeed and cosleep forever, and the weirdos are the ones who stash their babies in another room to cry it out.

Why there'll never be another Burt

Today I was being lazy, watching TV, surfing the web for plane tickets to NC in February and saw a commercial for some man soap. Didn't catch the name.  The only thing I remember is that the guy was using it to shave...his chest.

Really?  I mean, I assumed the speedo models posing well oiled on the beach did some extra manscaping, but does the average guy buying stuff at Kmart shave his chest?

Schools back in session

It's been a few weeks since I've been in here.  Some cool things like Talks Like a Pirate Day and Beaver Football have happened but mostly life has been swirling by.  I am tired.

Moving out of the 'ville and on with life

I admit to playing farmville - for a long time until it got a little too 'crazy'.  I tried Fishville and even took two days to sample Yoville (ugh).  Then I started Frontierville and realised (after about 26 levels...) what a gigantic time-suck these games were.  No better than playing 50 rounds of solitaire on your laptop or having a minesweeper contest with yourself, except the 'villes allow you to convince yourself that there are consequences to not playing every single day.  I always told myself that I just wanted to finish my current 'challenge' and then I would quit.  But damn those smart marketers over at Zynga, there was always another, slightly more intriguing, challenge that surely could be completed quickly....

Yesterday I deleted them all.  Just 'click' and months of planting, building, decorating and collecting were gone.  And, well, why the hell did it take me so long?!?!?!

Today I sat down to check my e-mail, check people-who-I-barely-remember updates on Facebook, and then, got off my ass and walked away from the computer!  Without the ridiculous frontier to manage, there was no reason to keep staring at the screen.  Whatever will I do with myself?  I guess I'll start with dishes....


(no wonder I played games - maybe I should start World of Warcraft or some MMPOG where I can really waste some time.....)

Techno-envy

Mike says I don't really 'use' my Droid.  It's true I don't spend a lot of time sampling apps and rearranging my screen environment.  I have it set up how I like it.  Every now and then he'll put a new app on my phone and I admit that I have really enjoyed and kept (and for some can't imagine living without) them.

On Sunday my phone screen died.  That's the problem with these new fancy touch-screen phones, if the screen dies it is just a hunk of plastic.  So we called tech support and they sent me out a new phone.  It arrived yesterday and was actually one step newer than my old phone - a Droid 2.  Before I even knew it had arrived Mike had switched phones to take the Droid 2 and give me his Droid, set up our respective phones and packaged my old broken phone for delivery.

When we knew this was an option I said of course he could have the newer phone, he loves gadgets far more than me.  But now his phone works better than mine, and I am jealous!

Oh well, at least I can get text messages again.  Bad news is that anything texted to me Sun-Tues noon was not received, so drop me a line - I'm not ignoring you!

t.

"Show me how you Wiggilo!"

Summer camp.  For me it was summers filled with friends and activities away from home.  A chance to be seen as a musician, a swimmer, a skit extraordinaire, to shoot clay targets and collect wild daisies in the same day.  To swim to the dock and fall in and out of love in the space of one evening free time.  Camp was singing silly songs and slaving over crafts to bring home, it was getting mail from home and being too busy having fun to ever write back very often.  I loved camp.  As I got older, teen angst and hormones changed (church) camp and I let others opinions of me and their actions toward me sour the camp experience.  Shortly after camp went bad, church as a whole became decidedly unpalatable, so it was a chapter of my life I simply moved past.

I've just returned from 3 days of being a volunteer lifeguard for Camp Melacoma in Washougal, Washington and am full of camp songs and spirit and the joy of sharing 'camp' with my son.  I have a hat full of 'swap-pins' and an autograph book full of camp nicknames like Tweety, Wolfcub and Ash.  After just a few nights in a 70's era cabin with like-minded adults I feel just-plain-happy.  Everyone there was a volunteer.  And everyone there was there for the kids.  It made me realize how much I miss teaching and interacting with small people.  College students are fine, but I only have a first-name basis with a few and even then they are worried about bigger issues than how they will survive if their group doesn't win the camp spirit flag at least once. 

Camp is a disconnect from adult life just like the classroom was.  At camp I was "Waves", the pool lifeguard, a cool adult.  At camp I could spontaneously break out into random song at any moment and no one thought it odd.  Being quirky and energetic were positive qualities.  I miss being that person.

It was good to go and get a renewed perspective on what makes me happy.  Kids playing, growing and learning who they are is awesome - and I like to be a part of it.  I've been thinking and thinking that I need to grow my family, frustrated because the timing and interest didn't seem to be there.  Maybe the wanting I'm feeling isn't about getting old and not having a child with a man who is actually a good dad, but just the need to express the side of me that teaching did.  I have to think about it.

I have great memories of this past weekend and can't wait to go back next year.  Something about a guitar by the campfire with mellow music to wind down the evening did more to bring me back to myself than I would have imagined.

Curse you Hulu

Again I am crushed.  Hulu recommends shows for me and I work my way through the episodes, loving the characters and the story line and *sob* the season ends.  Again, when I search for the next season I discovered that the show I just watched was made in 2003 and cancelled after one season.  Cliffhangers be damned.

On my list of reasons to love/hate Hulu:

-Wild Roses
-John Doe
-Amsterdam
-Queer as Folk

And who knows how many others I just don't remember right now.  Time to turn off the computer and head back to the library.  Romance authors are amazingly prolific - and nearly interchangable for my purposes.  Mmmmm, unlimited supply of escape-from-real-life.

I am appreciated - or at least it would be a big pain in the ass to replace me...

Today at work I found out that I am getting a raise.  :)  Back when I applied for another job on campus my supervisors told me they would work on a raise if I would stay.  I stayed but honestly didn't expect much.  It was more about 'the devil you know' and all that.

The raise is significant.  As in, I might be able to get a mani-pedi, or buy a new outfit without changing the menu to ramen for a week.  As in, being caught up on bills and out of debt faster!  Whoohoo!  It's almost as much as I was making teaching, with significant less work and about the same amount of office drama.

I also think the raise is kind of a secret...shhhhhh.  To get it they had to change my job title to something that would probably annoy the hell out of my office mate.  But here's to lean ground beef and new sandals!

Facing Sunsets

Today I had an epiphany.  Getting old sucks. 

Now, I don't think of myself as old.  I mean, sure its questionable to appreciate the fit of a college baseball player's uniform at 33, but I can still wear cute mildly offensive t's as long as they are fabulously retro.

Lawrence had a fortune cookie that said "old will always be 20 years older than you are", but what happens when you near retirement and the whippersnappers move into management and don't appreciate your extensive personal relationships with the clients or your tried and true methods.  How are you supposed to feel when 'new blood' is brought in to make things run more efficiently and you are passed over for promotions by younger, more tech savvy applicants?  What do you do when your years of experience are now the anchor around your neck and 'close to retirement' is a bad thing?

You bitch, moan and bad mouth everyone younger than you in the organization as being shortsided and bound to cripple and destroy the place you sacrificed your life to build.  Then you get your equally experienced friends to bitch, moan, and badmouth with you and sigh loudly to anyone in a 20 foot radius about how the system is mistreating you and making a big mistake.  Or, at least that's what they do at my office.

I hope that when it is my time to step away from the workplace, even if I love my job and can't imagine who I am or what I'll do without it, I will have the grace to proficiently train the replacement they hired at double my salary and walk away without letting it become a 'bad situation'.  Please don't let me call people into my office (or even worse, invade theirs!) to discuss why I feel betrayed and how I am going to get my papers together and leave, the hell with the new person.

Just as I hope someone will have the courtesy and love to shoot me dead if I ever top 250 lbs, you have permission to haul me out of the office and handcuff me to an RV bound for Pheonix if I ever get all 'poor me, these young kids don't know what their doing' when the world has clearly passed me by.

Testosterone meets trees

Last weekend we went camping, finally!  Summer was passing us by and every weekend had some pressing matter that prevented us from loading the truck and heading out.

Friday night we finally made it to our special spot out near Lava Lake and found our beloved campsite trashed.  :(  Someone had built a giant bonfire-style ring in the center of the site, as well as a deep fire pit where we usually put the tent.  We found a new, less level, spot for the tent and pressed on.  The site had so much glass and trash, but we cleaned up a bit and it was manageable.  Saturday we dismantled the bonfire ring.

But the most memorable part of camping wasn't the cleanup, or the sight-seeing to the local hatchery or catching a young buck wading across the river.  It was playing medic.

Last year Lawrence got a BB gun for his birthday (obviously not from me) and he has really come into his own with it.  He can hit cans and load and prime it all on his own now.  So instead of playing UNO and reading books and generally breathing in the quiet beauty...I dashed around the site moving enemy cans closer and collecting our 'wounded'.  I sat around sharing war stories and helped reload when time was of the essence.

I'm thinking I need to get myself a girl if I want to go on hikes to collect ferns or identify trees and flowers.  My boys are very manly and enjoy flaunting their chests and talking about the best foods to eat if you need really stinky farts as a weapon...

Glimpse of what could be

Today at karate I did not multi-task.  I did not play sodoku on my phone, or pay bills, or clean the car.  I sat and watched my boy do spinning side kicks.

After karate we went to the public library for a lego building event.  I got down on the floor and helped build a tower complete with hidden treasure, a wall and a house to form the perfect kingdom.

Riding home both Lawrence and I dove into books, leaving Mike to drive and try (unsuccessfully) to distract us.

For 3 hours I imagined that all I had to do in the world was be a parent.  Now he is in the bath and the house is quiet except for the splashes and occasional sound effects.  As reality sets in (the car does need to be cleaned, the bills do need to be paid, along with 20 other household tasks) I wish I didn't have to work 8-10 hours a day, so there could be more evenings like tonight.  Tomorrow will be twice as hard to catch up, but it was worth it.

A day of nothing

Ever take a day off work with great big plans to accomplish great big things, complete projects and generally press the 'reset' button on a life out of control?  I do.  Even though it never helps, and the projects never get done, and I usually end up sitting in the hammock under a tree reading trashy romance novels and drinking 'iced tea'.....

Today's big plan was to clean and redecorate Lawrence's room.  He had a couple overnights and then a birthday and then boxes of goodies from both grandmothers.  All sorts of new stuff with no designated 'place', which means it is piled in the center of the room like some evil junk-monster,just waiting to trip, scratch, and generally annoy.  As the pile got bigger, Lawrence stopped doing much in his room, and as of last night was limited to a small lego structure right in front of the door. 

When I suggested he clean his room he got all teary and overwhelmed/panicy sounding, so da-da-ta-da Mom to the rescue!  I was going to sort books and toys and clothes and hang shelves and set up a computer and...and...and...where's the damn vodka?

I put a dent in it, but its definitely an unfinished project.  Realistically, when 2 full (grown-up size) bookcases of books and 10's of thousands of legos (not kidding) are involved, one day was probably not realistic.  Especially not one beautiful day with just the perfect breeze....

trashy romance here I come, the day isn't over yet!

The British are Coming!

Okay, so only one. We are hosting a UK soccer coach next week, he should be here Sunday.  Lawrence is going to soccer day camp and you get a tuition break if you let the coach crash at your place  ;)

Hopefully he isn't expecting Martha Stewart...

Why public universities are going broke

Today it is 59 degrees outside.  The AC in my building is on full blast.  It is so cold that I am running the space heater in my office.  So are all the other ladies in my suite. 

Hoping dandelions grow

So I can eat them!

It's only the 10th and I'm already asking "can I pay you on the first?"