Life Lately...

Sorry about the radio silence for the past few weeks, but life got hectic.  Mom retired at the end of February and those last two weeks were KNUTZ.  With a K.  Her birthday was on the 19th and I had planned to go out to eat but the weekend before that I started having terrible pains in the hamstring of my left leg.  It felt like the muscle was cramping, like a charlie horse, whenever I tried to stand up or sit down.  Once I was in a position it would relax but moving from one to another was excruciating.  At it's worst it would spasm once I sat down sending me into tears and I could never get into a fully straight standing position making life completely frustrating.  I was working that weekend and went down to the ER on Saturday, spending Sunday and Monday working while taking muscle relaxers (I didn't drive of course) and then tried to rest on Tuesday.  On Wednesday when I went in I was in tears again because of the pain and my supervisor sent me back to the ER.  This time the doctor could see that my hips were out of alignment, gave me a different muscle relaxer and pain pills and 3 days off.  Mom called my chiropractor and I saw him that day and have gone back 4 more times to get it back into alignment.  That whole week off I spent on the couch in a semi-conscious coma of pills and sleep and it didn't get better until right before I went back to work.  The muscle was still a bit tight but has loosened up since then.  It still feels weak somehow.  Like when I get up to walk I think I can walk at a certain speed and then that muscle tells me "Nope".  I still sort of gimp around and I'm going to do some physical therapy to try and get that muscle back into shape.  This derailed everything.  Mom's birthday dinner was moved to the next week (though I did have donuts delivered to work with a message telling her Happy Birthday and they put a candle in one) and the blog was neglected because it's actually really hard to type while laying on your back.  I was still convalescing the week after her birthday and we tried to catch up on what we could before our schedule became really intense.

Last week was so busy Mom and I had to keep a daily running list of things to do and reminding each other where we were going and what we were doing (and through it all Mom went to daily radiation appointments).  Monday I went to work and then we went to Costco and scouted out the food we were going to get for her retirement party which was on Friday and picked up the non-perishables.  Tuesday we went over to Seattle in the afternoon, stayed the night and then went to an ultrasound appointment at UW for me since I am starting my last embryo transfer.  We drove back on Wednesday and I went to work late.  Thursday we got up, dropped the dogs off at the groomer's since it was Doggy Spa Day, went to Safeway and Costco and bought the perishables for the party and then I went to work and Mom went home and balled melons, stuffed cream cheese in strawberries and made pasta salad.  Friday I went to work early and Mom baked the hot food (the venue only has a warming oven) and made crockpot meatballs and then we met at Costco again to pick up the sandwiches and cakes and headed for Cascade Gardens.  We rented the lodge there which is SO beautiful and hired two of their workers to help us with the food and wine.  After setting up the centerpieces and figuring out the food, we got ready and had an amazing party!  Lots of people came, great stories were told and good friends were seen, lots of food was eaten and wine poured and it all went off without a hitch.  So after it was all over we hauled the leftover food up to the lab and threw our very tired selves into our beds.  And for those who couldn't be there here is a little photo journey...

Pinworthy Picks of the Week

Eeek!  These posts are reverting to weekly!  And we know that only leads to fewer and fewer, so I need to step it up.  Life has (obviously) been busy.  This week was me off one day, Mom off another, me trying to get my continuing education credits caught up and my renewal of my MLS and SM certifications in to ASCP (they're due only every 3 years, but of course I procrastinate!), another eye doctor appointment after work but I think this time he finally fixed it, more cherry picking by Mom followed by a delicious cherry cobbler (I should probably blog the recipe), How To Train Your Dragon 2, puppy spa day with many errands run and dinner at Red Robin and finally Friday.  Phew!  This has left my evenings to pinning mostly, because we all know that's what I like to do when I'm tuckered out.  So here are my favorites from this week...

The more time I spend in my kitchen the more I realize that this will be the next part of the house to be remodeled.  I also realized that all the pictures I've taken in my kitchen display the shabbiness of it (more bokeh!).  I'd love to have those fresh, beautiful, sunlit filled pictures I see on other blogs!  So I have been dreaming of a far off future where I can afford to do that.  But that doesn't mean it's not too early to start pinning those ideas!

Love everything about this except the subway tiles (not a fan)!!

And I'm in love with these built in drain board options on countertops!

The cup hooks under the shelf is what I love about this!
And I'm thinking I don't have to remodel to do that now...

And a farmhouse sink to complete the ensemble!
(It looks like I tend toward mint/sea green, white and gray color schemes)

Even without the "perfect" kitchen I can bake delicious things, so that's where I often head next.  Yummy treats!

I soooooo want to make these thumbprint shortbread cookies!  We are going to pull out all the old cherries sitting in the freezer from a few years ago and make jelly out of them.  I can taste it now...buttery shortbread, tart-sweet sour cherry jelly and sticky sweet glaze.  Mmmmm....

I have always wanted to make a Baked Alaska ever since I heard that you could put ice cream in an oven!  Seriously?  And it doesn't melt?!?  Well this Brownie Candy Cane Baked Alaska sounds ah-MAZ-ing, but since it's summer I might swap the peppermint ice cream for strawberry.  Neapolitan you know!

And then there's the idea of "grilling" fruit.  I really want to taste this because I think of things like "caramelized" and "warm" with that cold cream inside it.  But what I'm pretty sure I would get from my grill is "raw inside" and "tastes like last week's burger".  But these Grilled Nectarines with Amaretto spiked Mascarpone sure sound fabulous...

Well since my brain is on a summer food kick, we can't leave out the summer drinks as well.  I have had two sweet and juicy watermelons in the past couple of weeks, so that's probably swaying my judgement on the drinks I found!

Watermelon Coconut Agua Fresca

Watermelon Malibu Surf
Though at the moment, I'd probably go without the rum...

I've been feeling rutted with my hairstyle lately and it's due for a haircut, which always helps.  It seems my hair likes to be mistreated and blunt.  But I do love a gorgeous up-do or at least a hairstyle that goes up easy (it makes for the best hair days)!  So here are the hair inspiration (hairspirations?) pins I found this week...

Love the multiple twist backs!  Though this looks better suited to Melinda's hair...

I've done something like this before and it looks good with my facial structure!
I really love the voluminous twist across the front!!

And finally something I'll never be able to do, but it looks so pretty!

So I think I'll leave you with some amusing pins from my favorite "fandoms" (even though I know Tina hates the word "fandom")!  Hope your week was more productive than mine!!

Oh Doctor Who, how I love thee, let me count the ways...
(And I have honestly considered all of these names for my children, but rule them out because they are companions and I'd probably get called out on it...)

Love this movie!  Definitely in my top 5!!

My Week in Review

Life got busy around here and my blog was neglected in the meantime this week.  But that makes a new post all the more sweeter, right?  So here is my week in review...

Last Saturday Mom and I went out and re-planted part of the garden.  We had planted out the seeds for the pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, etc right before we left for the cabin.  When we came back I went over to look at the garden and all the markers indicating what we'd planted had been tossed and the dirt was dug up in areas.  While the wind can sometimes uproot a marker, it doesn't usually dig up the dirt to find the seeds.  I'm figuring the birds were watching us plant all those nice seeds and promptly went and helped themselves after we'd left.  So this time we covered the rows with some garden cloth and made sure there wasn't such easy access to our seeds!

All the corn plants had these beads of water at the top!

Somehow the dry shelling beans made it through the birds...

On Tuesday when we were headed out of work we saw a big cloud of smoke out over where we live. "Probably on the Training Center," we said to each other.  The military is notorious for starting fires on the big open land they have.  It's perfectly fine if a bunch of brush burns around here, it's good fire control for later in the summer when just the heat alone can seem to start one.  But as we drove closer and closer to our house it looked like it was almost on top of it.  "Umm, Ummmmm!" we kept repeating.  As I turned down our road I saw it was a hill a couple of hills away from our house that is part of a wildlife area.  And as I turned on to our road I saw a helicopter fly VERY close to the ground on further down the main road.  Mom and I grabbed the dogs and then drove backward down my old bus route seeing just how close this fire was getting to us.  It burned fairly close, but we were pretty safe.  They fought the fire on the side with the houses and let it burn off into the wildlife area.  When we got down to where we could see brush burning you could also see that there were 6 helicopters dropping water and two planes spotting overhead.  We watched for a while and then went home.  I read online that there was an evacuation order for people living very close, but nothing for us.  I didn't take my camera on our drive, but I have some pictures from our place of what we could see.

The hills are alive...with smoke...

To give some perspective of where it was...

See how low they were!  There's a second helicopter in the lower right --->

Spotter plane

As we were eating dinner we could hear the helicopters flying back and forth over our house going to the river to pick up water.  Then we heard one of the planes flying really low heading over our house. It got louder and louder until it sounded like it was landing on top of us.  We all bolted for the door to go see it and I couldn't get it unlocked fast enough!  We made it to the deck but we couldn't see it anywhere.  Darn!  It turns out the fire was started by shooting at an outdoor firing range that borders the brush land.  No houses were lost, only a couple of outbuildings burned, but it burned about 9,000 acres.  We were lucky that the strong winds were blowing away from the houses and that the firefighters did such an amazing job of keeping it back.

That evening we pitted two of four bags of cherries that we had picked on Monday.  I had taken pictures of my bag I picked earlier and these current cherries are quite a deeper red!  Here are some lovely pie cherry pictures to enjoy...

Then on Wednesday we pitted the last two bags.  And we are DONE.  There are cherries out there but they are for the birds because our fingers can't take much more!  All that acidity and fluid just make them wrinkly and tender.  We have probably 10 bags of 4 cup allotments of cherries.  That is plenty for us to eat cherry pie well into the winter!  There are bags of older cherries in there that I was thinking of getting rid of but not now.  You forget how much work they are and in our world of excess just toss out what is probably still good.  We can use the older cherries for making jelly if not for pies.  Besides, we only get crops like this every other year or so if we're lucky, so let's make the most of it!

Thursday we needed groceries desperately and we hadn't paid our bills yet, so that evening was given to the mundane life necessities.  But I took more pictures of the baby chickies!  Growing fast, getting more feathery and less downy, and more scrawny..

And here we are at Friday!  It was a pretty good hair-day, which always makes the rest of the day somehow better.  :)  My evening has been spent blogging and perusing other's blogs and Mom is working on making a grate for the top of the fence for the coop.  I'll probably be helping here soon.  Hope your week was full and that your weekend be relaxing!