Life Update!

Well, I really fell off the face of the earth after the blog challenges ended.  A lot of that has to do with the fact that I have been working crazy amounts of overtime.  In this last two week period I worked 12.25 hours of overtime.  Yikes!  Actually my whole life has been about numbers recently.  I am still waiting for my ovulation kit to turn positive.  I've been through two cycles now with no ovulation occurring.  Taking my temperature each morning has made me slightly psychotic...was that a jump in temperature, or just a random high?  How big a difference is considered a jump?  Isn't it day 21 yet?  I am so sick of peeing on these sticks that all say negative, so let's just get to the part where my progesterone is drawn and we get an actual number. 


In work related numbers, besides the overtime one, are how many credits of continuing education I have.  Every three years we are required to get 36 credits of continuing education to maintain our certification as Medical Technologists.  My credits are due by September and I currently have 11.  Yeah....I'm a procrastinator.  So I am trying to get all studied up to take my Specialist in Microbiology exam, which gives me a few more letters after my name and on the bright side gives me 25 credits.  11+25=36!  But I have to get 1 transcript, 1 letter of experience from my laboratory director confirming I have the 3 years of clinical laboratory microbiology experience required, and 260 dollars to take the exam.  This will give me 3 months to take the exam, which I of course need to do really soon so I can turn in my credits. Numbers, numbers, numbers.


On the gardening front I have a fun slide show of numbers for you!

2 strawberry beds

1 (very healthy) rhubarb plant

1 delicious strawberry rhubarb pie (these strawberries were bought...ours aren't that prolific yet)

20 beautiful pots of flowers on the porch

24 Roma tomatoes planted

24 Bell peppers also planted

21 wheel-barrows full of dirt for 3 more raised beds

10 rumbles of thunder while we were filling them

1 beautiful garden!

Blog Challenge Day 30

One last moment.


For my last moment I would like to share where my life is right now.  The moments I have been having are worry about a number of things, being unsure if the path my life is heading down is the right one and a little bit of fear.  For some of you this will be news you've already heard, for others it might be a shock or just something you knew would probably happen given my own creation story.


I am currently working on getting pregnant.


Without a husband.


Which makes it difficult... :)


I started traveling down this path about 2 years ago.  When I was 27, I talked to my lady-doctor about getting pregnant by artificial insemination.  She said I was still so young that I might find somebody and I should give that a try first.  I can't say that I have been the most active in looking for someone, but that I have given it an honest try.  I looked at the guys I knew in college and tried to initiate a relationship with one of them, only to get turned down.  I looked at the guys I worked with that were my age, but none of them saw me as anything more than a friend.  I looked at dating websites and just couldn't build up the courage to go that route.  I honestly believe that I don't initiate the feelings required for a guy to see a girl as more than a friend, and I am okay with that.  So now that my first choice of building a family has fallen through I am moving on to what I always knew was my back up.


Being a child who has lived the life I am going to give my own children, I can truly say that it is a much better life than some kids who had the ideal family.  I was loved and wanted more than anything my mother ever desired, and I knew that.  There was no doubt about who she loved more and there was no pain over sharing me between parents who were separated.  I had the happiest and best childhood ever and I remember crying one night in my bed because I knew I would have to grow up.  I don't think that recreating that for my own kids is doing them a disservice.  I think it is one of the most precious things I can give them. 


So a year later I asked my lady-doctor again and she got me in touch with someone in the medical field who had more recently had artificial insemination to get her children.  She got me in touch with a reproductive doctor in Seattle who I am now working with to get pregnant.  I have been working on getting my cycle regulated since November and am now working on making sure I achieve ovulation so that I can try with some donor samples in the near future.  I have already chosen a donor and was a bit surprised about how that goes now.  When I was conceived the documents about the donor were sealed, as in you'd need to get a court order to see anything about him besides the fact that he was "Northern European".  Today you get baby pictures, height and weight, eye and hair color, ethnicity, current occupation or college degree, family genetic history...the list goes on.  Also the company that I chose that provides the donor sperm informs you that it is basically an open adoption.  The child that is conceived can contact the donor once they turn 18 if they want to.  Neither I nor the donor can make any sort of contact and the donor has signed away all parental rights to the child.  At first I was a bit unsure of this, but even though I was okay with not knowing who my father was my child may not be and they deserve the choice.  I have to say that women who find out they are pregnant by peeing on a stick are lucky, they only have 9 months of worry.  All this time to get everything working properly is way too much time to worry about the possibility that I am making the wrong choice, that this is the wrong path, that I am not ready for it...I have changed my mind twenty times in the last year, and luckily this train is too big to stop, I'm just along for the ride now.


So those are my current moments.  Watching children everywhere, in church, at daycare, at the grocery store, and feeling that empty place in my heart ache.  Sitting at home watching One Born Every Minute and freaking out a little.  Tending my garden, playing on the computer, watching movies and thinking about how I am just living life, but not living it for any purpose.  Knitting baby sweaters and imagining the kids that may wear them someday.  Endless hours, days and months of w...a...i...t...i...n...g.  And hoping that this will all work out.


I hope that you've all enjoyed these blog challenges over the past months.  It helped me to more fully blog about who I am and share with all of you my deeper thoughts at times.  I'll try to continue to blog more openly and expand beyond what's growing in my vegetable garden.  And I only hope for support from you as I move down this uncertain path of life.

Blog Challenge Day 29

Your aspirations.


My aspirations have changed overtime like anyone else's.  I found an autobiography that I wrote when I was in about 5th grade.  We had to write this section about what our future would be like and when I read it as an adult I was floored.  In my future I had said I would go to college close to home, become a hematologist, own the house I lived in and get married.  Well, I went to Central Washington University which is very close to home, but it wasn't the first place I wanted to go when I was in high school.  I was looking at Gonzaga or St. Mary's College in Tacoma.  I wanted to be a hematologist because my mom is one.  She's actually a Medical Technologist and works in hematology.  Well I became a Medical Technologist, but I work in microbiology, making me a microbiologist (not too far off from my prediction).  When my Grammy passed away, Mom gifted me her half of the house, so I do own part of it.  The only prediction that didn't come true was getting married.  When you're ten I think predicting 3 out of 4 futures that come true isn't too bad!


So I guess the lesson I should learn from that is that I really need to be serious about the aspirations I want to achieve because my self-talk is so convincing even I believe it!


My current aspirations are:


1.)  To someday own a time-share or house here-->

2.)  To travel to Italy someday.


3.)  To make my house as off-grid as possible.  We've got the barn and fenced in pasture for animals like sheep, goats and cows.  We've got the chickens and vegetable garden going pretty good.  We're working on a root cellar, compost pile, and a hand-pump on our well.  We'd love to get solar and/or wind power someday.


4.)  To get new carpet in my living room along with a nice flat screen and sound system (especially since our current TV's screen keeps jumping at loud sounds...yeah it's old enough to still have a tube system).


5.)  To get my Specialist in Microbiology registry test taken, which is equivalent to a Master's degree in Clinical Microbiology.


6.)  To pay off all my credit cards and student loans paid off. (Which with all that I've listed above will be pretty impossible!)


7.)  To have a happy and fulfilling life where I am surrounded by people I love and who love me back.

Blog Challenge Day 28

Something that you miss.


I would have to say the thing I miss most...is my Grammy.


I know that those of you who know me would say "Really?!"  And it's true she drove me crazy half the time, but the other half was worth putting up with the constant nagging, yelling, and name calling.


Okay, that makes her sound really bad.


The thing was she was unique.  My grandmother grew up in Butte, Montana and that really molded her personality.  She was resourceful, direct, liked to have a good time but let you know when it was getting out of hand, generous, honest to a fault, and the spice to life.  She had only an 8th grade education but she was very well educated in life skills.  She could can and preserve and cook for dozens of people (and still did when it was only the three of us).  She could find a use for anything.  She was kind of a pack-rat, but had lived with so little for so long that it was hard to throw anything away.  She loved to chop wood and did so until her back wouldn't let her swing the axe anymore.  She enjoyed painting anything and everything gold...with gold glitter...and add some more gold.  She loved sending cards for any and all occasions.  She had a lovely singing voice.  She would rub her knuckles when she was worried.  She would gossip to you about people in church...who were sitting only an aisle away.  She was upset when anyone sat in OUR seats at church.  She loved babies and could help you calm most any baby down.  When she was younger one of her favorite things to do was to go to old dumps and pick through for "treasures," broken bottles and things.  She loved to make up decorated magnets for the people at work.  She thought that everything would be worth something someday, as in, "Keep that!  It'll be worth something someday!"  She liked to freak out her grandchildren by dropping her dentures out her mouth.  She really did love her family and was a true matriarch.


Some good stories of my Grammy....


One time, when she lived on the wheat ranch, her best friend Mary Neal and her started playing Yahtzee one evening.  Their husbands went to bed and it got later and later and they still were playing.  When the sun started coming up they decided they'd better cook breakfast and act like they got up early so they're husbands' wouldn't be upset.  I hear they acted like school girls when they got together.


Another is a time when they were up at the cabin.  They used to take sticks of dynamite for blowing rocks out of hills.  Seriously.  Well one of the guys decided it would be a real laugh if it blew (a safe distance away) without anyone knowing.  So he set it up to blow and was going to run back and act nonchalant until it blew.  Well she knew something was up so she watched for him to come back and sure enough here he was walking back.  Well he couldn't run while she was watching so he sort of stilted-walked back because he wanted to bolt so badly, but didn't want to give it away.  I'm sure she found it terribly amusing.


Again at the cabin there was a time when they were all eating and Mary yelled "O-RE-O!" real long and loud.  Uncle George stood up and sat down and stood up and sat down, unsure of what he should do.  And baby Fred took his bowl of peaches and dumped them on his head.


One of my favorite memories of my Grammy is the way she would walk the beach with us.  She'd have a backpack on and a grocery bag in her hand and pick up all, and I mean all, the broken and whole pieces of sand dollars on the beach.  She'd wear her shoes and walk out and in with the waves coming on shore.  Occasionally she'd have to high tail it if a really fast wave was coming in.


Another of my favorites is her and mom stealing oyster shells from the shelling plant.  They were all in a pile, but I'm not sure they were out there for free.  They climbed out of the van, with us four girls waiting, and got a garbage bag full of them.  Shoveling as fast as they could, they filled it and then threw it in the back and jumped in like Bonnie and Clyde.  I think that was the year a bunch of you got Nativity scenes on gold painted oyster shells...


After Grammy passed away our lives became less cluttered, less dramatic and ultimately less lively.  Who knew it was the 80 year-old that was keeping Mom and I so active?

Blog Challenge Day 27

Your favorite place.

Oh I have been waiting for this one.

If you know me at all, even if you have only known me for a week, a day, heck maybe even a couple of minutes, you will probably know what is coming next.

My favorite place is Cannon Beach.  And joining this blog will be all sorts of pictures that I have taken for your viewing pleasure.

My family and I have been vacationing at Cannon Beach for about 23 years.  We go about twice a year, once in the spring and once in the summer.  We always book our room at Surfsand Resort a year in advance and get the same room every time.  It's like having your own time-share and it's like going home whenever we're there.  Often we won't book the spring trip thinking we won't need to go next spring, but after an Eastern Washington winter there is no better way to start the spring than a trip to the beach.  Let me tell you why Cannon Beach is so special to me.

I love the shops and the people we see when we are there.  Coastal Yarns and the lovely ladies we always see, and now who even know us when we come in and are so happy to see we're back.  Bruce's Candy Kitchen with arguably THE best taffy on the Oregon Coast along with a whole shop of the best chocolates, sweets and candy corn ever.  Geppetto's toy shop and looking at all the toys I was once desperate to buy for myself and now look at them and think about the kids I may be buying them for later.  The galleries and the art and wandering through them thinking about the beauty some people can create with brushes and imagination.  Osburn's Ice Creamery and eating a dripping ice cream cone on the porch on a hot summer day.  The yummy places to eat and now that I am older, drink!  Bill's Tavern with their wonderful Blackberry Beauty beer and exceptional home-brewed rootbeer.  The Cannon Beach bakery and the boxes of donuts we always get and of course a loaf of haystack bread.  Morris' Fireside restaurant and what I consider THE best clam chowder ever, as well as the people there who remember us coming there year after year and have asked about where everyone has gone to now that it's just Mom and I going.

I love walking the beach with my dogs and talking about all sorts of things with Mom.  Collecting shells whether they're broken or not.  Walking down to the tidal pools and looking at all the creatures that live there and peeking through telescopes that the Haystack Rock Awareness Program has put up to see the birds that live on the rock.  I love the unpredictable ocean and the power it possesses.  I love sitting in the room on a rainy day with the fire on and a good movie playing and doing whatever you want to do not what you need to do.

The best part about Cannon Beach is how it is so much a part of my childhood memories.  When I and my girl cousins were young my Mom and Gram took us all.  That's six people in a van loaded to the gills and four of them being children headed to the beach.  We were allowed to take one bag of things to do and for a long time it was a Caboodle box.  Melinda, Erin, Katey and I would plan out what we could fit in our boxes, Barbies, comic books, drawing pads, pencils, etc.  Mom would pack our duffel bags in the back and worry about the weight and how low the back of the van was riding to the ground.  It would often scrape the pavement as we pulled into Mariner's Market to get groceries.  Back then Surfsand had kitchenettes in each of their rooms and we cut down on food costs by eating dinner and breakfast in the room and only lunch out.  When we would all go we would get the Presidential Suite, room 209, and it had a full galley kitchen and big dining table and everything.  It had a double wide deck out the front and we would sun our wet clothes and beach towels on it.  It was awesome, a full house at the beach.

Oh the memories.  There was the year that we discovered Smartfood white cheddar popcorn and each got a bag that we finished off individually.  Or the year Katey collected sticky rubbery hands out of toy machines and called them squishies.  The year it was really warm (at least to a kid) and we spent hours in the waves with water up above our knees jumping the waves as they came in.  Or the year we used an inflatable pool toy and would let the rip tide float us down the beach.  The time we walked in the ocean up to our waists down to Haystack and saw the huge crabs in the ocean.  The year there was a log stuck in the sand and we all tried to stay on it as the waves would hit us.  Or the time we tried it again with a log that wasn't stuck and Melinda got her toe squished.  Hug Point and climbing up above the waterfall and into the caves and around the point.  Erin making "music" with her feet by sliding them through the dry sand.  The year we drove down to Newport to see Keiko the Orca whale and driving back so late that everyone was falling asleep including Mom, so I started reading aloud from the book I had brought.  Grammy being upset with half the things we did.  Throwing bread over the railing at the seagulls, and possibly the cabana boy.  Me drawing up the outfits we were going to wear while we were there.  Riding horses on the beach in the morning.  Eating at the big table at Morris' and laughing at the "salad" they brought out which looked like they went out back and picked it off the bushes.  Katey eating french toast all the time.  Melinda being sour about something at least once in the trip.  Erin collecting cow related items.  Us diving into the pool with a "No Diving" sign being posted the next year.  Us playing Marco Polo in the pool until everyone else left.  Sitting in the hot tub and then jumping in the pool and it being freezing cold.  Walking to the video store to get a movie.  Always wanting to go to the Seaside Aquarium to feed the seals.  Eating at Pig 'n Pancake and then shopping in the Christmas store in the back.  Driving to the beach and cheering when we drove past the "Welcome to Oregon" sign on the bridge and then chanting "ocean, ocean, ocean, OCEAN!" screaming when you saw a glimpse of it out the window driving through town.  Hearing people in the room next to us and using a glass to try and hear through the wall.  Going to Peter Iredale and eating bologna sandwiches, grapes and chips out of the back of the van.  Katey finding a ring in the changing rooms there and then promptly losing it.  The icky sand crabs on the beach.  The time we went after Gram passed away and it was just me and Mom and it felt empty.

Cannon Beach is the one place that I am most relaxed and happy.  I thought about moving me and Mom down there after she retires, but we looked into it and the cost of houses down there is not comparable to where we live.  If we sold our huge house on 5 acres we'd be able to buy a cottage on a 100 x 100 foot lot in town.  And it rains so much that we'd probably be terribly depressed.  And it doesn't get hot enough for me to grow tomatoes...  But maybe someday I'll be able to buy a timeshare or something.  If not I just plan on going back and back to the place that is home when we are there.  And hopefully there will be new memories made, with my family, with my cousins, and with all the people that will someday fill our lives.

I'm sure there are times I've not mentioned.  Add your favorite Cannon Beach memory if you want. :)

Blog Challenge Day 26

Your fears.


I wouldn't say that I have any serious fears of heights or spiders or anything.  I can go up in high buildings without being paralyzed by fear, I can kill a spider with a shoe after a small scream, it just all depends on the situation and how old I am.


When I was really young I was really scared of ghosts and things you couldn't see.  My mom used to watch Unsolved Mysteries and I spent most of the time with my hands over my eyes.  Even the theme song to this day gives me chills.  The biggest thing that scared me when I was little was the upstairs of our house.  Now our house isn't that old, it was built in 1976, and it was owned by only one other family than us that lived here for maybe 3 years.  When I was very small it wasn't as big as it is now and we slept in the upstairs bedrooms.  But when I was in second grade we added on and started sleeping in bedrooms downstairs because my Grammy's knee got bad and she couldn't go up the stairs so often.  After we moved out of upstairs it took on an attic-like quality.  There was lots of stuff up there, including a play room for me, but it just started to feel creepy.  I wouldn't go up there at night by myself and even when someone went with me I would literally run back down the stairs.  You could just feel something was watching you or about to grab you.  In high school my friend Nicole was skeptical about all this, so her and I went up there and just stood quiet for about a minute, and then we both ran down the stairs.  There was just a goose-bumpy feeling that came over you.  In high school I'd have these Christmas parties and the Ouija board never worked better than upstairs in the loft room.  After my Grammy passed away the upstairs didn't have such a creepy feeling anymore.  If there were ghosts living up there we'd like to think that Gram kicked them out.  Probably standing like she did at the cabin with her hands on her hips telling them that this was her property. :)


Now as an adult the thing that I am most afraid of is losing people and the thought of being alone.  It was a hard time when we lost my Gram and my immediate family seems to be getting smaller and smaller.  People move away and move on and those of us that don't move away from home get that left behind feeling.  I wouldn't say it's regret or envy of those who've moved on, just loneliness at all the people you used to see and things you used to do that have ended.  That's why we have to be brave and face the biggest fear in life, the fear of the unknown.  It's not something I deal with very well, but if I can swallow that fear and take the big steps then the rewards will be worth it.

Blog Challenge Day 25

A first.


I have been thinking about this for probably a week and a half.  A first.  I can't come up with anything, and I think that is my first.  I've been able to babble on and on about a lot of these, and this time...nothing.


The biggest problem is I can't remember a lot of my firsts.  My first birthday? Nope.  My first date? Never truly been on one, unless you count a gay man taking me to dinner and dancing being on a date.  My first house?  Ummm, still live in the house I grew up in and now partially own it.  My first car?  That I can do!


Of course my first car is preceded by the time I first drove a car, and that's a pretty good tale.


I didn't have my permit yet, but I was going to have to get it soon and had read all the literature to take the test.  Mom thought I should start off slow, so she drove her van to the end of the lane, got the paper and the mail, turned it around and had me drive back.  I put the van in drive and gradually took my foot off the break. It started to move forward and I had the wheel in a white-knuckled death grip.  The van continued to move down the driveway at an idling pace.  If it was a movie you would've seen a snail on the side of the drive moving more quickly than I was.  Mom said that I could put my foot on the accelerator and go a bit faster.  I told her that this was fast enough.  Bless her that she didn't laugh out loud.  We made it back to the garage and instead of turning it around and parking it facing out like Mom usually does, I just pulled into the spot.  Not in the garage of course.


So my first car.  Fast forward to the Christmas after I had turned 16.  I had only gotten my license in November because I was more than happy to be a passenger my whole life.  My mom had said that there was no way I was getting a car of my own.  I, after 16 years, knew how to propose things I wanted to her and that was with logic.  I was in cheerleading and there were some late night away games that she would be driving in at 11 PM to pick me up from.  Since she got up at 5 in the morning I thought that was a good selling point.  The other was that I didn't want a brand new car, just something with wheels.  She hadn't thought of that.  I had scoured the used car ads in the newspaper and found a decent car for $800.  (This was ridiculously cheap considering the computer I bought for college cost $2,000.)  She was game.  So my cousin David found a decent car in blue, cause I think that was my only request, and drove it down for Christmas.  


What a car.  It was a 1986 Dodge 600, making it only 4 years younger than me.  It had sanded off places in the paint, for what reason I have no idea.  The back windows would periodically inch their way down from going over the speed bumps in the school parking lot and I'd have to get in the back and roll them up.  It. Was. Awesome.


I learned a lot of lessons in that car that I would have never had in a new one.  Like the fact that the gauge on the dash with the thermometer on it does NOT tell you how warm it is inside the car.  It actually tells you the temperature of the radiator and when it reaches H that is not good.  Or the fact that when your car stalls out in the middle of an intersection it will not start when the gear shift is in drive.  But if there are enough cars around you honking that you put the car in park and throw your head against the steering wheel and have a short cry and try again, it will start.  There's also the fact if you open the back door after it has ice rained all night and don't shut it tightly enough it will fly open as you go around a corner and with adrenaline pumping through you as you open your driver's door and smack it closed with your hand you can effectively make it impossible to open again when you get to school.  My favorite lesson was the one where I found out why anti-lock breaks are awesome.  On another icy, snowy morning I was driving very slowly down the small hill before you get to the main road that takes you into town.  As I pushed the break down slowly the car started to slide to the side.  When I took my foot off the break the car righted itself again. I tried this a couple more times before I remembered Gram always talking about pumping the breaks.  So I pumped them as quickly as I could and I did manage to stop before I ended up in the middle of the road at the bottom.


Eventually I did get a new car.  It's been a very good car without any problems until recently. Granted it is 11 years old now.  But all the things that were broken or wrong with my old car that made it endearing are just irritating and frustrating now.  I hate buying cars so I would be happy if the next one lasted me as long as possible.  And I eventually I plan on having kids, so something safe is required. But not a van...I'm just not a van type of person. I'd like something reliable in the snow because we have plenty of that in the winter.  I first saw the car I really want on Top Gear.  They featured this car in the snow and it performed pretty well. The car that I am smitten over is the Volvo XC90.  I have it bad for that car.  I've tried to look at Toyota Highlanders and Chevy Traverses, but I keep going back to that Volvo.








And I'd be buying this all by myself, which would be my next first.