Ch-Ch-Changes

Well, another "exciting" week full of ups and downs. First the ups! We had a great visit with my Sister and family. We had a nice long hike and enjoyed a beautiful waterfall one day and the next went to the ocean and had a wonderful time! We found tons of shells and tiny sand dollars! It was a beautiful day and a great time was had by all. We enjoyed wine and games, blueberries and delicious food. Not to mention great conversations and fun! Then it was back to the real world. The big bad news of the day is that my best co-worker, who I have worked with for a long time decided to leave today. Not just leave, like give notice, leave, like right now. So after working every day so far this week nearly on my own (due to illness with said worker and one other), I get called in on my day off to take over for said co-worker. At least today the other co-worker was not sick anymore and able to work, so I got a lunch break today. The silver lining is that I am accumulating tons of overtime and still have two more weeks in the month and two Saturdays to work. So in the end there will be benefit. It is distressing to loose my best co-worker, especially to have it be so abrupt and "in your face." Another wrench is that our new worker is not working out as well as we had hoped and may not be around for much longer. That would leave just 2 !people until we can catch some new fish. It will be a challenge, but I am staying positive and knowing that things do happen for a reason....maybe now I can get another raise! ;-)
Tomorrow we are off to visit family again and very much looking forward to that. I love spending time with my family and wish someday we can all be much closer, so we can do this more often! Plus it helps to have something so cool to look forward to and work towards during these hard times in my work life. Turn and face the strain ch-ch-changes......

Day off, in reverse

Man, it is a good thing I woke up when I did (ie just now! 4pm!!!) otherwise there would be no supper and still laundry! Yikes. Normally I just sleep in in the morning on my day off. Today was different. I had scheduled a haircut weeks ago with my regular gal, she gets booked up, at 9am for some strange reason. It actually worked out well since I ended up having to go to work at 8:30 to do a treatment on a bird (tube feeding). From there I zipped over to the wedding venue to drop off the contract. After that, I figured I should get my other errand done before it got to hot as it was an outside task, something to do with "special berries" and hooo-boy are they special! Then I came home and worked on the laundry, ate some lunch, and "sat down on the couch just for a minute." Ha! Oh well, I do believe that I wouldn't have slept that long if I didn't need it. I still feel tired and am hoping I will have a good nights sleep too. I still am not sure on what to make for supper, but it is something with ground turkey. Maybe burgers since it is still pretty hot. We shall see. Lately I have been coming up with some good suppers with just what we have in the pantry. I made a spicy black bean and rice dish with smoked turkey sausage (smoked paprika, chipotle and cumin Yum!), and a skillet meal with rice pilaf, veggies and ground turkey. It is good to be creative plus there is the added bonus of not going to the store. Well, tomorrow its back to work for me, Don is spending the day in Portland and going to a criterium race there in the pm. Then we get ready to go and head out early to see the fam on Saturday. Wooohooo!!!

Busy Times

Too long between posts makes this more difficult, but things have been really busy lately. Work has been crazy and we are in a down cycle where there are lots of strange and terrible cases and bad outcomes. We have also just been crazy booked. Not a whole lot really to report today. I worked the morning and Don took a ride with some buddies. Now we are home. There is a cool event happening today in a neighboring town, but we are not going due to finances. We are kind of on a short budget and disposable income is not much. It is very frustrating to not just be able to go and do or go and get with out thinking ahead to other expenditures in the month. Someday I hope we will be more solvent. We are working towards that goal.
In other news, my sister and her family will be arriving in a few days, and I am very excited to see them. It has been too long and I am ready for a good visit. We have worked it out to maximize our time together and I am very much looking forward to that. It is always a good time when we all get together. I know that loads more has gone on, but I just am at a loss at the moment to think of anything I want to relate. Another day perhaps.

Random Bits

It's been a while since I posted...and nothing major to report. We managed to hit the last Mc's during the holiday time off, it was nice and good to get it checked off. Unfortunately, I was having a pissy day so that inhibited the goodness. We have done a little more wine tasting as of late too. We both really enjoy tasting and comparing and finding good wines. I had a long, rough week at work and am basically avoiding talking/thinking about it...working on that compartmentalizing thing that my partner is so good at. We had dinner at our Mc's the other night and I overheard a conversation that at first made me laugh a little and then start to think. Two late middle age women sitting across from each other, one having wine, the other a mixed drink, at first just chatting about life and then...."Have you had a chance to use your magic eraser yet?"...at first I thought, man I hope someday I will have more to talk about then the newist cleaning products, and then I thought, how nice to have a friend to share with, even the littlest things like what cleaning products work. It is nice to have people close to you that you can share even the littlest details of life with.
The Tour de France started today. Don got up early to catch the live broadcast, I slept in and am watching the mid-day ( it is on now, I still don't know who wins, although Don told me it is a Spanish rider). Then later we will watch the prime time expanded coverage. I am telling you, we are Tour nuts! The commentators and riders are like old friends, and once the tour is finished it is like having month long guests leave. I love seeing all the riders, the drama and competition. The country is beautiful too.
It has been nice having some time off together and I am working on living in the moment and not worrying about the work week coming up. Next week we are off to visit our families down south, and I am very much looking forward to that.

Adventures in Portlandia!

We had a visit from my parents this last weekend and had a great time. We always do, but we planned an absolutely packed Saturday to maximize our time. Mom and Da arrived on Friday and we had a nice dinner out and made a HUGE ( I am not kidding around....we made it in a lasagna pan!) strawberry rhubarb pie. Saturday we got up, ate and headed out. We first went to a classic car show in a neighboring town and got to see a really old steam engine called the 4449. It was really massive and very neat to be so close to it. It was also very cool to see the workings. Pretty neat stuff! While we were there we did a little geocaching thanks to Da's GPS. One was very easy and took little effort. The other, well, lets just say that when the GPS asks if you want "street" directions or "off road", it really does mean "off road". So we took the hard way and after a bit of bushwhacking, bramble ducking and water crossing we did manage to make the find. Unfortunately, all that nature kicked allergies in to high gear. Ah, summer!
We then headed off to "an address" that my Mom had collected. It was a surprise destination that only she knew what it was. Along the way we were guessing, trying to figure it out...
"is it a store? yes. does it have to do with entertainment? sort of yes. Mom, is this an adult thing? would you take my sister there? laughing, no and she took me first! do they sell kitchen stuff? ummm, kind of.
Dad gets it and says "I know what it is." Don and I are stumped, how can he know? "Because I live with her." he says. Finally we arrive at....Pensey's Spices!!!! We were super excited. My sister had taken our parents to one on the east coast after finding them online. What a cool place! All the spices you can imagine and more! 5 different types of cinnamon, no kidding! So we bought some spices and then divided them up later to share the spoils!
After all the good spice smells we were more than ready for lunch so off we headed to a new brew pub call Hopworks. It was neat and the beer was good. The decor is very bike oriented and the whole ceiling off the bar is covered in hanging bike frames. Pretty neat to look at.
Once we were all full and happy we headed up to the Japanese garden to look around. It was beautiful. There are all different types of classical Japanese gardening styles. It was so peaceful and quiet there. My favorite part was the zig-zag bridge over a huge koi pond with tons of fish swimming all around and under the bridge. From there we headed to the International Rose Test Garden and took in the sights and smells of a gazillion different roses. There are so many different colors, sizes, shapes, smells...it is truly amazing.
After that we headed back in to town to check out a Bike event called Cirque du Cycle. It was the first year for the event and it featured a Criterium race. Basically the cyclists have a short rectangle course that they go around and around on at really fast speeds! It is always pretty neat, although a little repetitive. After a tasty diner at Laughing Planet we headed home. It was a full day and everyone was beat.
Sunday Mom and Da headed off after breakfast and Don and I had a lazy day. Neither one of us just could get motivated to do much. I am finally getting pictures posted to flikr that I had intended to do then.
All in all it was a great weekend. I love spending time with my family and just wish we all lived closer so we could do stuff like this ALL the time! I am looking forward to a visit from my sister and her family later this Summer and many more weekends like this!

Progress!

Well, the big news is that finally progress has been made on the wedding front...we have secured a venue and date!!!! I am so excited. It is all finally becoming real, like really for real! I feel a huge sense of relief too. The venue is a local Hotel/Pub that we go to a lot and just always thought would be too expensive to do. It turns out it is not as much as we had thought and includes the space, tables, chairs, linens, set up and break down, silverware, plates, etc., service....pretty much everything! We still have to decide the menu, but they have tons of options and are flexible if you want something that is not on the menus already. We also know a lot of the people who work there and it is a friendly and comfortable place for us. WhooHoooo!!

Other news of note: We spent Friday night with friends who live outside of Seattle and had a decent time with them. They have 2 boys, the older is 4 the younger is 18 months. The older boy has decided that I am just about the coolest thing ever and spent most of our visit near me...."Hey, hey heewahwee.." It is funny how littles say my name all kind of the same! He is also very creative in making up songs. The current favorite is called "Donny way up it the tree" and it goes like this : Donny way up in the tree, Donny way up in the tree, he climbed up and he won't come down, so heewahwee tells him 'Donny come down here right now'!...There are occasional variations, some times its his mom that calls him down, sometimes "heewahwee" makes his jump down. It is amusing in any form.
Then we came home and have had a relaxed rest of the weekend. Currently Don is out riding and I just did my Yoga routine. Laundry and a shower await me! Then tomorrow back to work. Refreshed and ready for another week.

Chinks in the Armor

It has been a long couple of days, weeks, whatever. Work has been ok but stressful, home has been the same. The Boss got back just fine and we have made the transition back to having him again. Our coworker who was out for surgery is back, but not nearly 100% and may be just working half days this week. We have been very busy...liver masses, possible broken jaws, ear infections...I am just one day away from 4 days off in a row and I am really ready. I can feel myself getting pushed more and more. I am working hard to manage my stress...exercising, some compartmentalizing, some sharing...but I can feel it getting to me. It is really hard not to take it out on my partner, either by being down, crying at nothing, or just being short. Sometimes I don't think he really realizes how stressful it can be. I know his job is not all fun and games, but there is something different about the work that I do. I know that the time off will be good for me to recoup and get my psyche healed up again. I hope it will give us both some time to reconnect as well. I am very much looking forward to that.