No-Good, Very Bad Day

What's that children's book? About the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day? I had one of those today and, while I am still able to think of good things that I am thankful for today (I believe nosespray went in my Thankfulness Journal this morning, actually), the extent of my awakeness & attention right now is limited to watching Ugly Betty DVDs and knitting. Oh, and taking a quick picture (below) to show you my knitting progress. Other than that, ugh. Just UGH. I want ice cream, but I'm drinking water instead. Emotional sugar eater, what? Yup, that's me. Seriously, though, it's Monday. I should not be crying uncontrollably at work on a Monday. Especially when last week I cried briefly at work on Tuesday, which sort of was my Monday, as I had Monday off. And today's crying didn't even have anything to do with my job, really - it was caused by a very rude postal worker as I was attempting to pick up the mail on my way to the office. Note to cranky postal workers everywhere: You are not the only ones with difficult jobs and menial tasks to complete. Just because you hate your life or whatever doesn't mean that you can take it out on the rest of us. Seriously. I just want to get through a week without crying. Especially since the initial rude-postal-worker-crying turned into a few hours of I-miss-my-husband-and-baby-crying. Just weeping, crazy weeping. Ridiculous.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go knit a few more rows and drink 12 more glasses of water to stave of my sugar cravings.

Knitting by Faith

I am knitting together stitches of red and white wool that I hope will become part of a hooded scarf, most likely to give to one of my nieces. It's not always clear, however, how such projects will turn out when we begin them. One of the church readerboards on my way to work in the mornings recently stated, "faith is taking the first step when you can't see the entire staircase." So much of what we do, how we move through life, depends on faith - in ourselves, in others, in our previous knowledge, in our professional training, in physical laws, in cultural norms...the list could go on for days. We use the term, "take for granted," but isn't that just another way of saying faith?

I picked up a couple salads and had lunch with my mother at her school yesterday. We ate in the teacher's lounge with several other faculty members and one, a substitute teacher, told us about her experiences having a brain tumor several years back, a condition that not only threatened her life but took her sight away for more than a year due to pressure on her optic nerves (the tumor was located on her frontal lobe, near the corpus collosum, so it pressed down into her eye sockets as it grew). For a time, she saw only a haze - gray out of the right eye, colors out of the left. And then, one day she woke up and saw only darkness. Everything she did became "by faith" - trusting that her house layout would remain the same, believing that the doorknob would be at hip height, knowing that tasks may not look as expected, but they would be completed nonetheless.

I've heard it said that it is by faith we learn how to see. Just as I twist and weave two strands of yarn around my needles and look in awe as a pattern emerges, we learn to follow by faith tasks laid before us and to marvel in the pattern of life that is created. I have told many people, taking this job, making the move back to Oregon, it just felt right. When my husband got a teaching job just before the school year started I wasn't surprised - I had faith we were following a plan laid out for us. It is hard, yes, and sometimes we end up with knots in the yarn and things we perceive as flaws in the resulting patterns, but we are creating something here, and it is turning out to be something pretty darn beautiful.

Photos & Family Musings

So Angie is getting real excited about her upcoming photo shoot (2/13 - the day before my birthday!) for her new album release. She posted this self-styled photo with the tutu I made on her Facebook page yesterday:

I love it! What do you think? I'm real excited to listen to the rough cut CD Angie gave me last night to listen to, along with lyrics and chord charts for the songs she'd like me to sing back-up and/or play cello on. I'm actually listening to it right now as I type. It's good! I'm honored she has asked me to be part of such a cool project.

On a completely different note, it occurred to me mid-commute yesterday how much less my son will have to rely on his visual memory than I have as far as childhood memories go. Monkey, like most of small people his age, I'm guessing, takes technology for granted. "Let's make a video" is a matter of using daddy's iPhone, mommy's Blackberry, or the FlipCam. Taking pictures is a similar matter. When I was 6, photos were taken for special occasions on clunky cameras with 35mm film. It was a big deal when my mom pulled out her camera, the one her father gave to her when she was a teenager. People used to be lucky to have a photo taken of them at all in their lifetime. Today, we can take hundreds of photos in an hour without much thought or effort. Stop and consider that for a moment. Really. It's momentous.

Check out the photo below:

One of these five men is my great-grandfather, Alfred Causley, known as Alf to his friends. He was my mother's mother's father, a Barr Colonist who homesteaded near Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, in the early 1900s. He worked with the Canadian National Railway as a pumpman for 11 years in North Battleford before being transferred to the Dundurn District. This is how my grandmother and her brother came to be raised in a boxcar home. In 1940, he retired to Saskatoon, where he died in 1949, at the age of 75. This is one of two photographs I've ever seen of my great-grandfather Alf, the other being in an old photo album at my mother's house and picturing Alf, his wife and their two children standing in front of their boxcar home. I love that this photo has some of his friends and the family's personal effects in it, though. Imagine how much more precious those photos must have been when they were so rare and valuable.

My Christmas present to my father this year was a promise that I am going to interview him about his family so that I can write down all the stories that have not yet been told. Especially poignant, I think, since I didn't grow up with him - these stories will be new to me, as well as a gift to my child and his cousins. I want them to know where they come from in a way that my sister and I never knew growing up. I don't begrudge them the conveniences of capturing memories via modern technology - I just hope they take advantage of the opportunity to record their chapters of our family history.

An Unexpected Romantic Gesture

I feel like such a giant whiner even bringing this up, but it is hard for me to be apart from my husband this year. I am someone who really feels the emotions of others best through physical touch and experiences - a kinesthetic, visual learner by nature. When my husband isn't here, I don't get my fill of hugs and kisses. Regardless of how many "I Love You"s I receive over the phone, via Skype, via text or email, I still miss the hugs and kisses.

We got into a big argument last week. I'll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say that Snowpacolypse 2012 manage to throw a wrench into our otherwise well-laid plans for spending the weekend together. Hmm, that's a pretty decent little synopsis, actually. You don't really need to read the angry text messages or hear about the heated Skype conversations. So.

I guess one benefit of living apart is the built-in physical buffer (160 miles, in our case) when you need cool-down time. Nearly two days went by as I seethed and he...what? I didn't know. I supposed he was still trapped in Snowpacolypse, but I didn't really think that I cared, at that point. Fighting with my husband really brings out the 5-year-old in me. After working a short day Friday (7 hours), I headed home and began my great scanning/shredding mission in earnest. It was slow going, but it needed to be done. Saturday morning, I woke up and was very excited to have my first *me* day in several months. After running errands for a few hours, I had lunch with a couple of friends, and then headed home again to continue scanning/shredding. Oh, it was a relaxing day!

Sunday began much like Saturday, with scanning/shredding and folding laundry. But then, be still my heart, came the romantic surprise. My husband appeared on my doorstep. He drove five hours roundtrip to spend only a few hours with me. First he scrubbed my bathroom within an inch of its life. Then he shredded the giant stack of papers I had already scanned and took out the paper bags full of shreddings to the recycling bins. We took a great trip to Baja Fresh for spicy sustenance, then watched a chick flick and cuddled on the coach. Perfect mini-date with my husband? Yes. Amazing, romantic surprise? Yes. Pretty much the best way of "showing" me the apology he'd already verbalized? *YES*

I'm all atwitter with romantical feelings!

Too, too pretty, no?

Brace yourselves, folks: There are going to be a lot of photos on this one! You may remember me mentioning that I seem to be becoming much more of a girly-girl now that I'm out of my twenties. Is that normal? I don't know, but I'm enjoying it. My current obsessions? Cupcakes and tutus, not necessarily in that order. I found this adorable tutorial for making a tutu...

It was so cute, I immediately added it to my Pinterest board, Things I Want to Make. A few weeks later, my dear friend Angie asked me if I wanted to do some back-up vocals and instrumentals on her new album. Um, yeah! I (half-jokingly) said, "Okay, but only if I get to help with the styling for the photo shoot for the album cover..." and then, a moment later, inspiration hit. Oh. My. Gosh. Angie *needs* a tutu for her album photo shoot. NEEDS. Yes!!! So I got started with a repurposed skinny strap nude tank and some light blue tulle...

You'll see that I followed the basic method on the tutorial, but instead of looping the tulle lengths onto a long ribbon, I tied a little knot and then stitched it onto the hem of the tank.

Here's what the tutu looks after the first layer of tulle. I totally made marks at regular intervals around the hem of the tank before I started sewing in order to ensure even layers. I'm definitely a nerd like that :-)

Things started getting a little fancier during the second layer. I interspersed some black dotted mesh within the strips of light blue tulle. I didn't want the whole thing to get too dark or serious, but at the same time, I didn't want Angie to end up looking like a puffy blue cloud.

The third layer saw the addition of some super-long strands or, as Angie called them, "The long pieces for me to step on." Ha! Well, at least it makes things interesting, right?

This is a gratuitous tutu shot, post fluffing and wrapping some lovely little bows in the black mesh up near the top. Don't you just want to pet it??

So Angie came over to try on her tutu. Our friend Dawn came over, as well, and pointed out how much Angie looked like Cartman (from South Park) in her ginormous sunglasses. Ha! Of course, we had to pause for a photo.

And then the tutu went on. Look! Almost unconsciously, Angie morphed into a cutie wanna-be ballerina, complete with rounded arms. Dawn is lurking behind the door there. You can't see her, but she's there.

The next step was for Angie to explore her modeling skills. This look is...I'm not actually sure what this was. But it made me laugh, so I thought you might enjoy it, as well.

Okay, all straightened up now.

Oooh, let's see what's down here!

Testing the spin-a-bility

Aaaaw, like a little princess!

...and finish with a yoga pose!

Doesn't Angie look absolutely serene now that her tutu is complete? Let the album cover photo shoot begin! Want to see what Angie does when she's not modeling tutus? Check out her blog here.

Let me end by saying how happy I am to have move the original tutu tutorial pin to my Things I HAVE Made board on Pinterest :-)

Scan It, Shred It, Repeat

I have an exciting evening planned. The scanner and I are getting to work making digital copies of a giant box full of records. Then 3 binders and a stack of clear sheet-protectors and I are going to organize, alphabetize, categorize, and label the records from 2009, 2010, and 2011. Then the shredder and I are going to make short work of all the records from 1995-2008. To keep morale high, the computer will independently play a Sex & the City marathon and I will take frequent trips to the kitchen for mineral water refills. Oh yeah, I sure know how to live it up on a Friday night!

When I agreed to serve as Treasurer for a professional organization I am a part of, I had no idea how much *stuff* would come along with that position. No, I'm not talking about the time commitment, the many trips to the bank, or occasional reports to pull together. I'm talking about STUFF - a *giant* box full of paper that arrived a few short weeks after I came on board. Holy fire hazard!

As one of the youngest members of this professional organization, I felt it was my duty to go beyond the basic duties of Treasurer (you know...taking care of the money!) and to digitally organize this mess of records I received in the mail, if for no other reason than to avoid paying $40 to ship the box to the next Treasurer at the end of my term! And yes, I'm being ageist and I'm sorry if that offends you, but in my experience older professionals tend to be far less open to change than those of us who don't remember life before the internet. So anyhow, I got permission to take us digital (or more digital - they did ask me to keep paper records for the past 3-4 years) at our annual meeting last May, but of course haven't made the time to really dive into the project before now.

My original plan was to scan everything and then burn it onto CD-Rs, like one for each year of records. Two copies would be made of these CD-Rs; one would stay with the current Treasurer and the back-up copy would be kept with one of our members, who happens to be an accountant and does our audit every year. Simple, right? Except it still leads to clutter, because every year we add another CD-R. Aargh!

One very pleasant side effect of starting my new job back in July was an opportunity to explore more online storage options, aka *The Cloud*. I love the cloud. It's like having a really, really big purse that you can open up anywhere there's an internet connection. My PC at home? Check! My PC at work? Check! My colleague's Mac in Nebraska? Check! Another colleague's Blackberry in Colorado? Check! It's beautiful, I tell you!


So my current cloud storage of choice is Dropbox. It doesn't allow you a tremendous amount of free storage, but you can "earn" additional space by recommending Dropbox to friends. When they make an account and install the easy-peasy-downloader-thingie, you get more space. Isn't social media beautiful?

I think feeling so unsettled and home-less this year has really made me appreciate cloud storage even more. No matter where I go, there are my files. I actually have two accounts already: one for work and one for home. It's right up there with Facebook or Pinterest, as far as addictability goes, but with far less chance of wasting a ton of time playing on it. Dropbox is utilitarian, and I love it.


You may be interested to know that, in the time it took me to write this post, edit this post, and find cute little illustrations to go along with it, I've already scanned and filed all of 2010 and am now hard at work on 2009. Yay, me! I was actually supposed to be up in Tacoma this weekend, but a freak, massive snowstorm made a safe drive pretty much impossible. So, here I am - at home, alone, with time to work on a big organizational project and maybe even to do some laundry, clean my room, etc. I'll keep you posted on my progress. If you had some unexpected time off - an hour, a day, a weekend, etc. - what major project would you like to take on?

Flurries & Preparations

[Note: This post was written on Monday morning - and I ended up getting to my office in Portland about 3 hours later than planned :-P]

The drive to the train station this morning was peppered with crunchy snow drifts and slippery ice patches. My husband drove and I enjoyed the view. I love how safe I feel when he drives - it's like I can completely give up control over the vehicle because I know he has our best interests at heart.

So after stopping at Cutters Point coffee shop in downtown Tacoma and watching the sun rise over the bay while taking the first sips of a Red Velvet Frappe (yum!) we finished the last leg of the commute and arrived at the tiny, adorable Tacoma Amtrak Station (not to be confused with the ginormous bus/commuter station just across the street & down a bit). I was one of the first people here which was probably a bit of overplanning on my part, as the train has already been announced as delayed 20, 25, 30, and now 50 minutes in arrival. This is an example of how the Pacific Northwest is not prepared for cold weather, I suppose: the switches on our trains don't have heaters built in as they do in other parts of the country. Bust my buffers!

It makes me think about an old joke we had when I rowed crew in college, though: hurry up & wait. Rush, rush, rush so you can sit, sit, sit. It's all a matter of preparation. Really, though, isn't that what life is? A series of preparations? Education is a preparation for working as an adult. Dating is a preparation for marriage. Eating is a preparation for burning calories. Sleeping is a preparation for staying awake tomorrow. Antecedent, consequences, antecedent, consequences, as regular as train wheels clicking down the tracks - once they're defrosted, of course.

My word this year is *intention*, which to me is an integral part of preparation. It doesn't change what you do, so much, as being aware of *why* you're doing it. I'm sitting here in this train station with the intention of returning to Portland so I can put in a good week's work and spend another full weekend, guilt-free, with my family. I am preparing to return to my home, which is with my boys.

Can you believe I left this comfy little workspace behind?