The Celebrators!

I have a great group of friends.

There I said it.

And some family members are included in with that statement...you know who you are...

The Birthday Bash themed "Another FABULOUS year" was a success.  The proof is in the photo.

What a bunch of crazy people! And I love them all.  Every. Single. One of them. 

Those people made me laugh so hard last night I think I almost pee'd my pants. 

Those people made so much food, I don't think I'll ever eat again. 

Those people opened too many wine bottles. Which may not look like too many to some. But considering there were only a couple of us drinking wine. And might I add, Layered Cake Malbec...OMG so good. 

Those people made me drink wine from all those opened wine bottles.

Those people ate all my cupcakes.

The cupcakes were a hit for sure. I'm so glad I bought them instead of trying to make them. 

And those people left me a mess to clean up.  Thankfully, I like cleaning up after a party...I don't let anyone help clean up. 

These people got there late and didn't make the group shot.

So I made them act crazy all by themselves.

These people are some of my most favorite people in all the world.  I'm so thankful they know me and I know them.  Here's to more years for great friends, birthday bashes, and wine.

Pictured: LTR

Birthday Girl, Queen PopUp, Red, Princess Lori, BigBro, ChickenLady, Pantry Goat, Blueberry, Seattle SIL, The Landlords and they're little guy, and Mr. Queeen PopUp.

Happy Birthday to me!

As I sit in my office this morning thinking about the closing of my 43rd year (I turn 43 today, but as my oldest brother once told me, you're starting your 44th year actually. Think about that for a moment.) I was, as I always am, washed with emotions about where I am and how I got here.

My life in many ways has been a blurr.

I remember waking up on my 16th birthday - thrilled to be going shopping with Mom - and wondering how my life would unfold.  16!  Seemed like the world was at my fingertips just waiting for me to arrive.  In my eyes, I was a grown up.

Even at that young age I thought about who I was and who I wanted to be. I knew, instinctively that my life was mine to own. My parents made sure I knew the reality of being able to be anything I wanted, but they enforced that I had to work for it.  My 16 year old dreams differ greatly to my dreams of today. I don't often morn those dreams, but embrace them.  Oh, the wide eyes of the young who see life through rose colored glasses.

On my 25th birthday, I sat reflecting as well. My life wasn't exactly how I planned it, and I wasn't complaining. Sure, I wanted to make more money. Yes, I definitely wanted to find love. Still, I was healthy and surviving as only a 25 YO could...as Martina McBride says in one of her songs, "Living on dreams and spaghetti O's." 

When I was 16 I dreamt I'd be married with 2.5 children, a dog, and a white picket fence. At 25 the kids were questionable, being married wasn't something I wanted until I was older, the dog was then (and still is) something I want in my life, the picket fence...I could do without.  My dreams focused on me. My career. My friends. My surroundings. My life. 

When I turned 30 I realized that your twenties were all about figuring out who you are, and your thirties were about enjoying that person.

As I entered my 40's I felt very comfortable in my skin.  What you see is what you get. 

And as I reach 43 today I'm so happy to be me.  I'm not a super model. I'm not in love or married or even close. I'm not rich. I'm not unhealthy (mostly). I have it pretty good. I've got friends and family who love me. I've surrounded myself with great people who allow me to be me almost 100% of the time.  I'm tickled pink who I am today.

Today I think about what I've learned in life, how my thoughts and ideals have shifted slightly to be those of a *gasp* middle aged woman.  How experiences have condensed a few realities into a simple list of 5 truths about life. 

1. Life IS too short.  I hear people say it all time. I rarely see people live like that believe it. You blink and another decade as whooshed by. 

2. Pick your battles.  See #1.

3. Love yourself without exception. This is a hard one. If I had a super power granted to me, I'd help young women (and men I suppose) to see the true, unique beauty in themselves.  Self-confidence is very attractive.

4. Love your family. You might think they are dysfunctional. You might think they are crazy - and they most likely are - but at the end of the day, they will most likely have your back.

5. Give back.  I am a very fortunate person.  I'm lucky to have a job, a good income, and health.  There are many who do not.  Volunteering, and giving back helps you fell better about who you are and who you want to be.  It makes the world a happier place, and that's never a bad thing.

I know none of those are life shattering.  I know a hundred, thousand people before me figured this out.  I know that each year I'll keep learning something new.  But by and large, these 5 things ring true year after year.  And as I sit on the threshold of beginning my 44th year, I want to be sure that I am living each day, without exception, to the fullest it can be...for that day. Cuz let's face it, some days sitting on the couch is all you want to do.  And at 43, I'm okay with that.

Whoose! The sound the last week made as it sped by!

Holy fast week batman.  I knew the holidays were always fast and furious, but my word.

I started my holiday adventure by getting up bright and early on Thursday morning. I had an 8:30 am flight to Tucson and being the ever so early person I am, I wanted to be there 2 hours early.  I was figuring that Thursday would be one of the busiest travel days so I'd get a jump on it. I don't mind sitting around an airport for an hour and watching the crazies wonder by. 

Tired, and a bit hazy from lack of sleep, I hopped in Sparky and drove to the airport parking. The morning was cold and frosty which made me focus on driving.  I was going over the list in my head of what I may have forgotten, as well as making sure I didn't slide off the road so missed that I had voicemail.

I parked Sparky, got into the shuttle and was standing on the platform to go into the airport when I noticed I had three voicemails.

Huh? Who'd be calling me this early?

As I was walking into the almost empty airport (figures) I realized my flight was delayed until 11:30am. Ugh.  That means 5 hours to wait (it was 5:30am). 

I found the Starbucks - who's line was longer than the line for security - ordered my coffee and set out to find something to do. 

Turns out SeaTac had a bunch of entertainers shuffling around the concourse. Elvis was there. He learned how to juggle in his retirement. Puck always wanted to meet The King.

They had carolers roaming the concourse and singing - well - carols.

I chose to upgrade to first class and then proceeded to talk myself into the first class lounge for US Airways (which they share with Continental).  I sat myself in a cushy chair, finished my starbucks and settled in for the long wait. 

Thankfully, I come prepared to entertain myself in airports. I had two books with me and my journal.  I didn't have to worry about being bored.  Or so I thought. Turns out that early in the morning, nothing sounds fun to do. So I sat and watched people come and go in the lounge.  I had more coffee, a danish and finally started reading my new book on writing. (One of my new years goals is to get better at writing...aren't you lucky?) Notice I said "writing" not "spelling"?

The phone rang again at about 10am.  It was US Airways telling me the flight was now delayed until 1pm. Great.  Text the MomUnit telling her to not leave until I text her again to let her know I'm sitting on the plane.  The plane, apparently, had a malfunctioning computer in one of the engines. They had to have one flown in from Phoenix, install it, test it, start the engine, test it, etc.  I much rather they fix it while the plane's on the ground then wait until we're air born...so I didn't mind waiting.

At about 11:30 I wondered out of the first class lounge in search of lunch.  Back down to the main concourse and discovered the airport was WAY busier than when I had originally arrived at O'dark thirty.  Tons of families with yelling kids now wandered the paths. I knew it was the holiday season. 

I found lunch, found my gate and sat and waited with the rest of the very tired travelers of flight 51 headed to Phoenix...someday.  Most were not cranky or angry about the delay, but there were a couple who were furious.  Too bad really, because things break, things happen. You can choose to be upset about it or you can choose to chill the hell out. 

Finally, we boarded. I have never been so thankful for upgrading to first class as I was at that moment. First on, and first off. And first with drinks and snacks. MMMM

The flight was uneventful except for this...

Ah Mt. Rainer - so beautiful.

Landed without incident too. Thankfully.  The MomUnit and a good family friend were circling and finally found me.  It felt good to finally be there. Christmas could now officially begin.

The Adventures of Puck

Saucy

On of my nieces - we'll call her "Little Red Head" (LRH) just bought herself her first car.  It brought back some pretty fun memories of the first car I purchased.  You'll remember, if you remember any of my blog postings, that the ParentalUnits "bought" (more liked towed home) a 1971 Ford Country Squire station wagon - with wood paneling because driving a station wagon around wasn't embarrassing enough - in high school.  I really shouldn't complain, that car got me and my friends around. 

But LRH buying her first car, with her own hard earned money reminded me of Saucy.

In in 1989 I was still in college.  The summer before college I was working a couple of jobs all in hopes of buying myself my first car.  The ParentalUnits weren't sure I needed a car in college, but I was convinced I did.  So, they said if I could buy it and maintain it, I could have a car. Thus the two jobs. 

I had my idea of what I wanted and like any naive teenager I was sure I was going to buying a super cute, well maintained, fast, sporty car.  How wrong I was.  After driving many cars, I finally settled on Saucy.

A 1975 Toyota Celica...bumble bee yellow.

Now Saucy was quite a car.  Bumble bee yellow, black interior, no dents, no scratches, a 5-speed, and in darn good condition for this little car. I bought her off a WSU grad so she also came with 4 studded snow tires.  She was perfect for a college student on a budget. 

Saucy also had a nice new tape deck (this was the 80's remember) and it had that new feature that it would skip an entire song when you hit FF and go to the next one...remember that?  I remember thinking how cool it was that you didn't have to hold down the FF button and keep "guessing" when the song ended. 

She was perfect.  She was sporty, speedy - relatively, and just what I needed.  So I packed her full in August of 1989 and headed to Pullman.

She did her job and bussed me and my friends all over Pullman and into Moscow Idaho when we felt the need for a "road trip" (all 8 miles from Pullman).  We were living the life.

Saucy, like many of my cars, not only had a name, but a mascot. Grimmy.

You all remember the cartoon Mother Goose and Grimm? Well I had a stuffed animal version of Grimm that had suction cups on all 4 paws.  Grimm road on the gear shift- very provocatively too I might add.  Every time Blueberry would get into the car she'd yell, "GRIMM-EEEEE!"  It was her thing.

Anyhow, Grimmy road shot gun on the gear shift, or on the back window depending on his mood.  He was yellow, Saucy was yellow, it was a match made in heaven.

Saucy did have her problems though. The summer of 1990 before I sold her (we'll get into that) she had a hole in her muffler. And while I thought she sounded like a hot rod, the ParentalUnits said it had to get fixed. 

During the school year though she only had a few issues. She had crack in something in the engine and it cost this college student a LOT of $$ to fix it. Still it was worth it.

Then came January in Pullman.  It was the weekend and we had been hit with one helluva snow and ice storm.  It was cold like only Pullman can get.The wind was whipping through the Stephenson towers and the roads were all iced over.

Saucy was parked in the parking lot in an end spot that you could see when you came round the corner of Stephenson East.

It was in the morning and I was coming back from the bathroom when I hear from the TV room, "Oooo that yellow car just got hit."

OMG...Saucy.

I ran to the window and watched as this little CR-X backed up after hitting my car. 

I no sooner recovered from that, within 5 minutes and another car came around the corner and smacked into Saucy.  Clearly I needed to move her. 

Down I trudge in freezing temperatures only to discover she wouldn't start.  All the way back to the 9th floor, call a friend to come jump start Saucy, and wait for him to get there.

In 30 minutes, Saucy got hit 3 more times. 

By the time the friend got there and we moved Saucy she had just one little dent on her.  She was made of metal man...woot. All the little cars that hit her, however, didn't fair so well.  This little CR-X had some serious front end damage.  She looked good with her new battle scar.

Still the end of the school year came and I was gearing up to head to Guadalajara Mexico on an exchange program for the first semester of 1990.  I didn't need to keep Saucy around for that time and figured it was time to sell her. I worked with a young man (hah - he was my age at the time) who was in need of a car.  He offered me $1000 for her to be paid at the end of the summer. 

So August rolled around, I had $1000 in my hands and was handing the keys over to this young man.  It was bitter sweet to me. She was such a good car and really did treat me well. To this day when I see a Toyota Celica on the street I yell, "GRIMM-EEEE!"

Monday Sugar Fall

Sugar fall is most certainly what happened last night.  For my December Sunday Dinner I did a cookie exchange. And all the little elves that were invited did a great job brings holiday goodies. But I'll get to that. 

This weekend started out with a viewing of Joseph and the Amazing Technocolored Dreamcoat at the Second Story Repertory Theater. A good friend of mine had one of the leads, and so Blueberry and I figured we'd go see her, then go to our Christmas dinner.  We stopped giving gifts this year, or maybe it was last year, and decided to just go to a nice dinner instead. 

The show was great. Packed theater, great singing, and some fantastic actors.  It was a condensed version - which being that I'd never seen it had me a bit confused at times.  But like I said, all in all it was a great show and something fun/different to do for the holidays.

After the show we went to a restaurant we hadn't been to for almost 12 years. I had bought a GroupOn for Ristorante Simone's that was once in our backyard when we lived in another part of Redmond a thousand years ago.  I remembered the food and the atmosphere being fantastic.  We drove to the restaurant only to find that it wasn't at the location I thought it was.  A quick look at the address and we realized they had moved into this strip mall - that didn't use to be there - across the street.

The decor was hip and trendy, that host gorgeous.  We both figured we'd be happy to have wrapped and under our tree.  Since we had $50 to spend we figured we'd do appetizers.  We ordered their calamari...OMG so good.  They served it with a spicy, very spicy tomato chutney ... and I've gotta say, it was pretty darn tasty.

After we ordered wine, and our entre and proceeded to stuff ourselves silly. No room for dessert.  Unless the host was willing...which our luck he was probably taken or gay.

Then it was up early on Sunday to grocery shop for Sunday dinner. I wanted to do a standing rib roast, but just couldn't stomach the cost - even on sale. So I opted for roast beef. Which, I must say, was delicious.  I served roast beef, this "low-cal" (yah right) potato casserole, Parmesan broccoli and a mixed salad with vanilla-pear vinaigrette - one of my favorites. I'll post the other recipes later this week. 

I had planned for 6 people, so I was all set.  An hour in, we were all sitting around chatting when there was a knock at the door.  I hollered "Come in." and in walk The Landlords. I was quite confused.  I didn't remember I had invited them.  So I had a look, I'm sure, of utter confusion. When I asked Mr. Landlord why he was there he gave me the look of, "Really?".  I felt quite stupid, but thankful that I'm a Wraspir and so cook for a small army. We had plenty of food, with very little leftovers.

Dessert was a cookie exchange.  And as I mentioned everyone got into the fun.  We had pin wheel cookies, Hello Dollies, peanut butter balls, ginger snaps, Junior Mint brownies, Walnut cookies, gum drop cookies, and little decorated gingerbread men. 

 Yum...

 I think the sugar greatly affected us. Oh wait, that's just how we are normally. Never mind.

It was another successful Sunday Dinner.  And as you can tell in both, Puck joined us as well.  He's a big fan of sugar.

Puppy Love

Most anyone who knows me that I'm a big fan of dogs.  I'm a big fan of big dogs mostly, but there are a few little dogs that have managed to wiggle their way into my heart. 

A million years ago I worked in a coffee truck at a local dog park. Axl Snacks it was called.  The truck sold not only coffee to the dog's people, but organic dog treats for the puppies.  The job was from dusk until dawn on the weekends.  Which, in the summer in Seattle, means 14+ hour days.  It was hard, but fun work.  I loved seeing all the dogs and got to a point where I knew the names of most the regular dogs -but couldn't tell you the names of their owners. 

The gig paid well and I got to spend many hours outside loving and spoiling other peoples dogs.

This past weekend I took photos of dogs.

Let me back up. The Pantry Goat approached me a couple of months ago about a potential co branding of a fund raiser idea.  A local retirement community in which the Pantry Goat's mother lives was wanting to raise $$ for a dog park for their community.  PG and her mom thought taking photos of people with their dogs and Santa would be a great fund raiser idea.  PG approached me to see if I'd be the photographer.  Gladly! She also offered that we'd split the $$ between the dog park and Susan G. Komen fund raising. Another stellar idea.  So I said yes.

I gathered Team Wraspir (BigBro, SSIL, and Blueberry) and we all spent a good portion of Saturday taking photos of residents and their dogs.  We didn't make millions, but we did make enough to make us want to do it again perhaps in the spring or at other events at the retirement community.

Here are some of my favorite dogs.

Meet Baily.  He was the sweetest little Shelty I've ever met.  He was wide and reminded me of the footstool in Beauty and the Beast.  I wanted to take Baily home.

Meet Pepper.  Sweet, timid Pepper. But oh so friendly. She didn't mind at all wearing the antlers.

Meet Cooper. Oh such beautiful eyes Cooper has.  Like Pepper, Cooper sat patiently and let us put antlers on him. 

Meet Rusty.  Another sweet, sweet dog who didn't mind at all wearing Santa's hat.

I discovered this past weekend that I really like taking photos of dogs.  Having Blueberry and BigBro as assistants was critical too. BigBro was the Dog Whisperer.  He was able to get their attention with the myriad of noises he can make with his mouth. Most useful noise, his duck call. Who knew.  Meanwhile Blueberry had an eye for composition. She was good at placing people and their dogs together.  She saw things I was missing and visa versa. It really helped having 3 of us working the pooches.  I won't even tell you how many out of focus, pooches walking half way off the set, type photos I have. Let's just say I'm thankful for digital.

Following a very exciting Saturday, I put together my new scrapbook room.  Well, the room isn't new. And scrapbooking certainly isn't new, but the desk and its components around it are new. 

I've been wanting a larger desk to allow me to "spread out" while I work. So I stumbled onto a nice corner desk at Office Depot. It was a bit more than I wanted to spend so I passed on it.  Then last week I went into Office Depot for something else and noticed the desk was 40% off. SOLD!  And I talked the clerk into giving me free delivery.  Win! 

The desk was delivered last Friday and I spent Sunday assembling it. Blueberry came over to scrapbook and "help" and thank god she was there. I was having issues, let's just say.  Though I only unscrewed and redid about 4 things. Not bad considering the IKEA-esque directions they provided.  I really should scan them and show them to you because - while I consider myself a smart person - I NEVER would have figured out what Blueberry figured out.

The room looks great. I have some ideas for the wall behind all the scrapbook stuff. Seeing it all together like that makes me cringe a little - that's a lot of stuff.  I really wish I would have taken a photo of the before and the den with all the stuff sitting, waiting, to be put away. Holy Scrapbook Convention Batman. I could totally run my own convention.

Desiderata

I was reminded of this today and thought I'd share.

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.