Aug. 21: A-Z Jen

Sherilee posted this meme to her blog and suggested we all answer it on our own blogs. She’s way bossy.

A. age :: 42

B. bed size :: queen

C. chore you hate :: dishes

D. dogs :: two, Casey and Oliver

E. essential start to your day :: coffee

F. favorite color :: navy blue

G. gold or silver :: silver

H. height :: 5’8”ish

I. instruments you play :: piano, flute

J. job title :: I’m a contractor and do lots of things, but lately it’s mostly database analyst work

K. kids :: two, Katie and Jack

L. live :: Oregon, born and bred

M. maiden name :: Saltmarsh

N. nicknames :: Jen

O. overnight hospital stays :: two C-sections

P. pet peeve :: inconsiderate drivers, bad grammar and punctuation

Q. quote :: Hard to choose just one, but lately this is a favorite: “Smart has the plans. Stupid has the stories.”

R. righty or lefty :: right

S. siblings :: one, Kathy

T. time you wake up :: 7-8ish

U. university attended :: Walla Walla (College) University

V. vegetables you dislike: not a fan of cauliflower or asparagus

W. what makes you run late :: traffic

X. x-rays you’ve had :: so many, mostly on my feet after stupid injuries

Y. yummy food :: potatoes are good in almost every form

Z. zoo animal favorite :: red pandas and otters

Your turn.

Aug. 21: So there *is* a floor in there!

We cleaned Jack’s room yesterday. It was a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling cleaning; no drawer was left un-emptied, and no poster was left unturned. It took us the entire day, but the job is done and we are pleased with the outcome. Everything in Jack’s room is currently played with, worn, or read. Jack is thrilled—mostly because we pulled his dresser away from the wall and he was able to retrieve LEGOs that fell back there ages ago. (Who knew that jester cap was so important in completing the Zombie Pirate World War II scene he’s been working on all week?)

I sorted through every box of LEGOs and removed all non-LEGO items. Here are the ones I can remember:

• Trash. SO. MUCH. TRASH.
• Enough dog hair to make a new dog
• Swim goggles
• Books
• Nine pairs of socks
• Numerous shirts, pants, and underwear (thank god for BBQ tongs to handle that last one)
• A Justin Bieber t-shirt that I’m pretty sure belongs to Katie
• Leggings (also Katie’s)
• Gum, chewed and unchewed
• Half of a Hershey bar
• An mp3 player
• Jack’s long-lost Nintendo DS
• $4.68
• A lunch money check I wrote in January
• Toothbrush, unwrapped but unused
• Three brownies of unknown origin or age
• Bank statement
• My Bluetooth earpiece

I usually get so frustrated when I walk into Jack’s room that I turn around and walk out, and I expected to have a few meltdowns during the cleaning process yesterday. I kept my cool. This meant, of course, that I not only surprised myself (yay me!), but that we completed the task—the best part of that being that we filled many, many bags that will be donated or tossed. Decluttering feels so good.

A productive weekend day = awesome. Also = a day to lounge around doing nothing? I wish.

Aug. 20: Decontamination

It’s been at least two years since Jack’s room has had a major cleaning, and that’s mostly because I avoid his space as much as possible. The floor is covered in LEGOs, even after he has “cleaned” <cough!>, and for some reason, his guitar and amp are always—ALWAYS!—in the doorway. Dresser drawers cannot be closed because they are stuffed full of clean and dirty clothes, papers, books, and LEGOs. The closet is growing things that make noise. When I walk in to this room, my blood pressure immediately elevates to dangerous levels. You think I’m exaggerating. I am not.

This is Vic’s and my project today. When we told Jack of our plans to tackle his room, he groaned. Then I told him I didn’t want him in there while we clean, and he was very, very happy. He thinks that’s good, that he doesn’t have to help. He shall surely regret not helping. He shall surely miss many of the things he holds dear but does not take care of and therefore does not deserve. (That’s me, pretending to be Meanie Mom. I suck at being Meanie Mom. I talk the talk, sure, but my “walk” is this: I’ll pick up every single LEGO piece from the floor and put it in a safe place, where it can be played with for years to come.)

Today will start with me muttering things like, “Why do we ever buy him anything when he doesn’t appreciate it?” and it’ll end with me tearing out my hair while setting fire to his room. (It’s okay; our next-door neighbor is our insurance dude and HE WOULD NEVER TELL.) There’s a good chance you won’t hear from me after today, so I just want to say that I love many of you and the rest of you can go to hell. “Hell” being Jack’s charred bedroom.

You will hate it. Trust me on this.

Aug. 18: More miscellany

Life got a little overwhelming there for a while, but I’m back and I have many different things to show you. This first thing is sump’n I found on Pinterest, and it fits in the category of decluttering so I love it. 

What you’re supposed to do—or what I interpreted as the instructions—is fill at least one bag from each area with items that can be tossed or given away. Since I’ve been decluttering for a few months now, I was able to cross lots of areas off right away. AWESOME! The list was inspiring, but I knew I needed to change it up a little bit to work for me.

The more I edited the original list, the more I added, and mine ended up being 60+ areas long. Nothing wrong with that. I even got the kids excited about working through it, because I said the reward for getting rid of all these things would be an overnight trip to the coast. I know Katie (our little packrat) thinks getting rid of old things just makes room for lots more new ones, so there has to be decent incentive to get any real work out of her, and fortunately they think going to the beach overnight is all kinds o’ awesome.

Speaking of the beach, when we went to Seaside last week, we browsed the way-cool candy store and were way-surprised to see these are still being sold:

Those, my friends, are candy cigarettes. Lots of different ones. There were two shelves full! My personal favorite is the “Just Like Dad!” brand. Oh, and on the other side of the store, they sold these:

Have you had these? I wasn’t brave enough to try one.

OK, is it weird that I think this iPhone handset is awesome and I kinda have to have it? I miss wedging a handset between my ear and shoulder sometimes.

Here are some more fun Pinterest finds.

 

Alright, back to overwhelming.

Aug. 12: At world’s end (or Oregon’s, anyway)

The four of us went to the beach yesterday, finally, and it was wonderful. Oregon beaches are beautiful but almost never warm, but yesterday there was sun and blue sky as far as the eye could see! I know! I could not believe it also! We felt fortunate to enjoy that very rare Oregon coast day. The kids had a great time and didn’t drive us totally crazy, which made me and Vic smiley all day long. ‘Twas good. ‘Twas very good.

We took tons of pictures, which I’ll share later, but here’s one of my favorites:

Vic snapped this pic with his phone, and the zoom on the iPhone camera is shee-AT, so it got that weird blurriness—but it almost looks like a watercolor effect has been applied, and I think that’s kinda cool. Also, Jack looks like he’s doing the peepee dance and that makes me laugh.

I needed yesterday oh-so-badly. It wasn’t just leaving town that was so great; to sit there at the end of the earth and watch the waves, especially in the sunshine, felt so warm—inside and out—and happy, relaxing, revitalizing, and even freeing. I can’t believe it had been such a long time since I’d been to the coast. Crazy—it’s only two hours from home! Vic and I are hoping to go back by ourselves for an overnight trip later this month (Mother Mary’s birthday gift to us both). And we really want to try to go more often, like we used to, before our mellows were harshed by those meddlin’ kids.

The sand totally farked up my pedicure. I guess that was the bad thing about the day. Worth it, though. Completely worth it.

Aug. 10: Gardening woes

I’m mad at my yard.

We redid the front yard a few years ago—with a few wins, a few losses—but this year a lot of the stuff is really looking rotten. Whatever do you mean? Is that what you’re asking? I’m sure it is, because I know y’all care sooo much about my yard.

Here’s one of my favorite plants we put in, Euphorbia Tiny Tim, because it’s unique and quite beautiful. Here’s how it looked about a year ago:

That’s an extreme close-up. Cool, huh? Here’s how it looks right now:

Yup. All that cool-lookin’ red and pincer-y stuff is dead dead dead, and I’m pissed pissed pissed.

Bellflowers: so pretty. Last year they looked like this:

…and now they look like this:

Stoopid Bellflowers.

The Sea Thrifts, so cheery!

But this year they make me grouchy-faced:

This one’s even worse:

Note the Bellflowers on the right above—that particular batch is still growing well this year. In fact, it’s all bunched up with the Black-eyed Susans, which you would think would make them each grow less full, but they’re both looking quite good. We thinned the Susans down this year and they’re doing alright…

…except for the bunch we transplanted to the side yard:

Nothing seems to do well over in the side yard, even though it gets plenty of sun. For two years, our Daphne has bloomed for a week and then dropped its flowers. The Periwinkle doesn’t spread nearly as fast as in other parts of the yard. Even arborvitae has died there, and DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO KILL ARBORVITAE??? I think the soil is just full of poison or somethin’. So frustrating. We’ve lost a LOT of plants over yonder. (Yonder = side yard. Duh.)

Okay, it’s not a complete disappointment. The Asiatic lilies are quite pretty, as long as the neighbor kids can keep from running over them. We planted them closer to the sidewalk than we should have. The boxwoods are perfect, the dogwood is doing well, the hebes are so-so. 

And behind the lilies, growing around the path stones, you can see the little Blue Star Creepers, which are doing better this year than ever. Of course, we don’t really give a crap about the Blue Star Creepers. Isn’t that the way it always goes?

On our front porch we have the Dusty Miller that’s on its third year. Annual, my butt. We cut it and cut it, and it just keeps growing.

This mini-rant all started because we just noticed the aspen in the backyard is getting the ugly, sticky fungus-y thing it’s gotten every year since we planted it. Victor wants to cut down the aspen. Victor is crazy. I will not cut down that tree. I Googled “black sticky aspen” and found that our tree either has Marssonina Blight or Septoria (you probably knew that, right?)—whatever it is, there’s no fix. It’s fungus and will keep coming back and that’s that and that makes me angry. It makes me want to kill things, but just about everything I see is already dead. Grrr.

For you gardener folk, is it possible for plants to have an “off” year? Is that why everything in my yard is pissing me off? Or did I anger the gods somehow? Is there anything I can do to make it all pretty again? I’m totally open to voodoo…

Aug. 8: Linky goodness

This post is not so much “stuff Jen says,” but “stuff on which Jen thinks you should click.”

My niece created this site: I Live Here: PDX. It makes me wish I lived in the city because then she would profile me but-cept then the site would shut down of boredom and that would make her sad. Anyway, if you live in Portland, Erin is looking for you. Contact her through the I Live Here: PDX Facebook page. You’ll be faaaaamooooous!

This tutorial for making a super-cute T-shirt shrug has been all over Pinterest lately. People have posted pictures of their completed shrugs below the tutorial, which is kinda fun to see.

We saw our first Broadway in Portland show of the (our) season, Les Miz, yesterday. The kids and I did a lot of reading up beforehand so we’d know the characters and basic plot, and I think that helped, because it was frequently hard to hear the lyrics (stoopid Keller Auditorium). The show was so much better than I expected it to be. Even Jack didn’t totally hate it. He and I found this LEGO Les Miz video yesterday—it’s got terrible sound editing, but the LEGO part is good.

Here’s some help treating your laundry. Sherrice and I discovered the wonders of Dawn liquid years ago, but a lot of these other suggestions are new to me. And while you’re in list mode, here’s one for the types of glue that can/should be used for different materials.

If you like cucumbers, you’ll love this salad.

Ever picture The Office with a Dallas-like intro? Me neither, but there ya go. Here it is in a classic sitcom style—isn’t it weird to watch The Office with a laugh track? Here’s my favorite: The Office in Japan.

The new IKEA catalog came out last week! Mine is already marked up and dog-eared. If you haven’t gotten yours yet, here’s where you can request one.

Have a super-duper fantastic week, y’all.

Aug. 4: More cancer? Sheesh.

There will be another person wearing a purple “survivor” shirt at next year’s Relay for Life.

It’ll be Mother Mary. During a routine mammogram she had last month, a teeny-tiny spot was found. It was biopsied last week and it is, indeed, cancer. Today she met with a surgeon to discuss treatment—which will be a lumpectomy, most likely followed by radiation. Surgery is August 26.

Getting a cancer diagnosis of your own is completely different than having someone you love get one. I remember spending a lot of time reassuring my friends and family when I was diagnosed; now Mom is doing the same thing. She’s also finding, to my secret delight, how anxiety-inducing it is to have someone call you every five minutes to see if there’s any change, news, or progress. Suddenly my frequently grouchy responses to her many, many calls last year are a bit more understandable.

Mom’s doing alright. She feels confident that the doctors are recommending the right treatment; she’ll be a good protocol-following cancer patient. She said she hasn’t totally lost it yet.

I don’t know if I haven’t totally absorbed the information, or if I’m as confident as Mom’s doctors that this is not a big deal—I mean, they say it’s totally treatable. Either way, I’m not freaking out. I think it’ll happen eventually, though—it’ll be prompted by something small, and I’ll totally lose my marbles because of this just-waiting-to-be-let-loose panic. It will be a bunch of my own cancer anxiety mixed with the thoughts of losing my momma, and I will undoubtedly scare small children; someone will dial “9-1,” just waiting for me to pull a gun to dial the last “1.”

(I don’t own a gun. I do have some pretty scary gardening tools though.)

Fortunately, I still have my cancer-fightin’ pants on. Kim F’n-W and Kathy have their ribbon tattoos. Several friends have scars from their own cancer fights. And we have POP ROCKS! Don’t forget the awesome power of Pop Rocks!!

I asked Mom for permission to blog about this, and she said it was fine but she didn’t want it to seem like she’s looking for sympathy. Well, SHE might not be looking for it, but *I* think it’s totally called for—I’m telling you to FEEL FREE to email Mother Mary (ageless1922-AT-gmail.com) and tell her you’re behind her as she faces this suck-tastic experience.

I love you, Mom. We are soooo kicking cancer’s ass again.

Aug. 2: Wise words

This Maya Angelou quote is cram-packed full of profundity, which is a decidedly un-pretty way of saying what it makes me think: WOW.

Angelou is nothing but brilliant in her simplicity. I’m breaking up this long quote of hers by sentence so you don’t miss a tiniest bit of the wow.

I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

I know for a fact this is true, even though I forget it sometimes. After Dad died, during the most intense periods of my grief, there were days when it really didn’t seem like life could go on—or even that I wanted it to. It reminds me a bit of this W.H. Auden poem, which is a big ol’ downer, but very sweet at the same time.  

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Uh oh. I handle rainy days just fine, but lost luggage enrages me and tangled Christmas tree lights can send me right over the edge. Actually, I just toss the tangled lights and buy new ones. So that’s better, right?

(It’s not better, is it?) 

<Sigh.>

I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.

My dad and I had a good relationship at the end, and I adore my mom. I do miss my dad. My mom, though, well, SHE IS NOT ALLOWED TO BE GONE FROM MY LIFE. Hear that, Mom? 

I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life.”

Even in my workiest days, I never considered myself a workaholic, but it took having a family for me to understand the difference she refers to here.  

I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.

Thank Buddha for this one. Or God. Or Allah. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Whoever passes them out, I’m just glad second chances come sometimes. 

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

I hope that I’ve contributed somehow, or if not, that I eventually will. 

I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.

Yes, but that open heart has to work with an open mind… 

I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one.

WHAT???

Oh.

I get it.

Hm. 

I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.

As a not very touchy-feely person, this one’s a challenge. It’s probably a good thing that a lot of people in my life don’t care that I’m not a touchy-feely person and touchy-feel me anyway. They help keep my daily quotient of touchy-feely where it should be. 

I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.

Nah, that can’t be true.  

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

This is probably the most popular of Maya Angelou’s quotes, or at least I see it around Pinterest a lot. It’s so true. I love it.

And I probably love you.

Aug. 1: Currently

Happy August! Currently, I am…

1. listening

As is typical on Monday mornings in our neighborhood, I’m listening to all the landscapers working very, very noisily. Sometimes they wait until after 8am to start up the power tools, like our noise ordinance says they should, and this morning I didn’t hear them until 9. Either they’re lazy sleeper-inners, or they had lots to do before they got to our street.

I’m also hearing Jack dig through his boxes of LEGOs. He just came in to show me a cute little forest scene he’d built onto a platform—it had big trees and sweet red posies, and then I noticed… the flames, my god, the flames! They were everywhere! I love his evil little creations.

2. eating

I haven’t eaten anything today, but I’m getting hungry. On today’s menu: Kraft mac and cheese, most likely. It’s the one thing the kids and I always agree on.

3. drinking

I just finished my morning coffee, and now I’m working on a huge tumbler of water. Can’t remember if I’ve written about the water I’ve been drinking lately—the “recipe” has been all over Pinterest and other sites. I fill my big two gallon pitcher with water and toss in slices of lemon, lime, orange and cucumber. Every time I pour some to drink, I refill the pitcher with water. The fruit and cucumber slices last about two weeks. I’ve noticed that after five days or so, the lemon is a bit potent, so I’ve been adding more cucumbers and they seem to cut the puckery-ness. I love water and don’t usually have a problem getting my 6-8 glasses a day, but having the flavored water keeps the soda temptations low. Tis good.

4. wearing

I’m wearing pants and a tank top. Boring.

5. feeling

I’m feeling excited about some new photo projects I’m working on. A while back Vic’s aunt gave him a frame similar to this:

…and I went through a bunch of our Disney vacation photos to fill each space in the collage. This frame will hang in the hallway upstairs. I’m also replacing the photos in the frames on our staircase wall. Instead of portraits of our siblings and parents from our wedding day, we’ll frame some of the nicer snapshots from our travels.

I’m feeling declutter-y, so I’ll be making a stop at Goodwill today.

I’m feeling relieved that Katie seems to be doing better this morning after spending most the weekend sick sick sick.

I’m feeling sad and hopeless that my sister’s and my relationship will ever be the way it once was. We are both very stubborn.

6. weather

This says it all:

Look at all o’ dem yeller circles!

7. wanting

I want to go to somewhere.

We’re thinking of doing a day trip this week (maybe Mt. St. Helens? Vic and I haven’t been up there for almost 20 years). Vic has vacation scheduled for most of this month, but since he’s had to take so much forced time off (stoopid hospital budget cuts), he doesn’t have nearly enough vacation days to use—which is why we aren’t headed to Florida right now, like we planned last winter. Instead, he’ll take a day off here and there, and hopefully every one of those days will involve us getting outta town. 

8. needing

I need to make lunch or teach the kids how to do it their own damn selves.

9. thinking

There’s a lot of stuff crammed into my noggin right now. I need to focus on just one area if I expect this day to be at all productive.

10. enjoying

On Friday, it looks like I’ll get to enjoy a quick lunch with Sherilee as she passes through town. We’ll be enjoying Saturday afternoon at the Lassens to celebrate Theo’s birthday. On Sunday, we’ll enjoy a family outing to see Les Miz.

I think that’s it for now.