UNDERSTANDING CHANGE

It's frowned upon, welcomed, impossible and inevitable. 

Lately, it seems to be everywhere, flooding me.  It's a tidal wave and I've been doing all I can to tread water and simply stay afloat in this sea of change.  Some of it is exciting and welcomed change, some of it scares the crap out of me, but either way there's no stopping it, so it's sink or swim time.  Good thing my parents gave me swimming lessons as a kid.

How is it when you would like for something to change, it stays impossibly the same?  Yet as much as you would like other things to stay as they are, they change in the blink of an eye.  Such is life I'm told.

It's hard to believe that last month marked the one year date of our moving into our new home.  How has a year elapsed so quickly?  Was I comatose for half of it?  I seriously feel like I go to sleep at night and weeks pass instead of hours.  How else can this be explained?  Could a whole year really have passed?  If so, then I guess I should start feeling pretty bad about the fact that one of the hall lights has been burnt out since we moved in, and it remains that way to this day.  Or that when we moved in, we immediately painted our master bedroom and the smoke detector is still dangling from its wires from the ceiling.  Is it that hard to get a ladder out and change a bulb or put the screws back in the smoke detector?  Yes...yes it apparently is.

The new place

Aside from that, life in the new house has been amazing.  What a welcomed change it has been.  Our last home was a really nice place, in a great neighborhood, but it just wasn't quite what we wanted.  Just the other night my husband was basking in the glory of living where we do.  We can get on our mountain bikes and ride right out our garage door, directly across the street and onto a trail.  We are within 10 minutes riding distance to the biggest mountain bike trail network in the area, and just down the road from the downhill park.  As if that isn't enough, Jason has friends who come pick him up in the morning to get a couple runs in at Mount Bachelor before work.  He loves that it is easy for someone to swing by and get him because we are literally on the way to the mountain.  We are also right down the road from one of his friend's favorite nearby rock climbing spots.  In fact, I came home the other night to find my husband drinking beer with his rock climbing buddy, Josh, and Josh's friend Matt after having done some climbing.  I realized after Matt left that he was the guy that my husband was telling me about who had been on the Discovery Channel's hit show Deadliest Catch.  I love that show!  Seriously...those are the kinds of bad ass friends we are making living where we do.  I can't tell you how nice it is to live near your friends and to be 'on the way' to something.  We were pretty far out of the way at our last house, so no one ever came over after a day of snowboarding or rock climbing for a beer or a burger...or really for any reason at all.

Jessie & I at my
Halloween Party.
I'm SheRa

Our Amazing Deck

We've had a myriad of parties and social events at our place this past year...because we could!!  I LOVE to entertain, but never had much of a chance to in my old house because it was so small.  If we had more than 4 people over, it would get uncomfortably crowded.  I yearned to have people over for a BBQ in the summer, but our outdoor space consisted of a 9'x9' concrete pad wedged in between our house and our neighbors.  We basically lived in a detached town home.  It was a nice, private space, but despite my best planter gardening efforts, it was not a place where you really wanted to spend time.  While our yard at our new house is a far cry from large, we can at least say we have a yard.  It's a small patch of grass, but our deck is a really nice size and we back up to an open green space in our community that has a walking trail that connects one end of the neighborhood to the other.  So despite our yard being small, I don't feel like my neighbors are right on top of me, and my yard is actually quite private.  It's also nice that we have many large and established Ponderosa Pines on the property.  I love hearing the wind in the trees and just the feeling I get sitting out among them on a nice warm day, listening to my little waterfall run into my pond I installed last summer.  I quite fond of the sound of moving water and tried many different types of table top style fountains in my side yard of my last house, but none could compare to my little pond.  Having enough space to install even this little water feature was a huge plus for me.

Back to the point that this year has flown by; I'm reminded that my darling little nephew turns two next month.  There's a kick in the pants.  He's like a walking yard stick by which time is measured.  Living so far from him, it is a huge reality check to see how much he has grown between every visit.  I've loved him from the very second he came into this world, but my last trip home to visit my sister and her family a month or so ago, may very well be my favorite visit with my nephew to date.  I stayed at my sister's new house for 3 nights, and it didn't take long for my adorable little nephew to adjust to me being there.  The guest bedroom is downstairs, just off the kitchen, and my favorite little guy would come down the stairs in the morning yelling "Auntie!  Auntie!", all excited to see me.  Despite the fact that it was way earlier than I would ever normally want to be up on a day off of work, how could I be mad and not want to get out of bed to that excited little voice beckoning me to come and play?  I still can't believe that a year ago he wasn't even walking, and when I see him next month for his birthday, Jason and I will be giving him his very first bicycle.  I thought it only fitting that he got his first bicycle from his very bike obsessed Uncle and his favorite Aunt.

All in all, the past year has been a good one, personally.  Professionally is another story entirely.  Can we just get over this recession business already?  Like seriously people!  It is making my job a living hell!!  It seems that everything slows down, and I'm certain that in a matter of weeks, I'll lose my job, then a trainload of work comes in, and I'm up to my eyeballs in it.  Things continue on in this crazy way, where we are all incredibly over worked, because we know that this influx of work is only temporary and it wouldn't make sense to bring on people for a short time, only to turn around and let them go after we get over this peak.  Then we hit the peak and plunge back into being slow again.  It's all or nothing, and this yo-yo work load has been going on for the last 3 years.  The worst part about this economy is that we are expected to do more for less.  I was lucky enough to get my job before the economy took a dive, and have worked hard to keep my job through it all.  I have plenty of friends and coworkers who have not been as fortunate, and I'm grateful to not have had the stress of having to look for work in these hard times.  I've learned a lot and grown a lot over the years, and have gone from a kid straight out of college without any idea what I'm doing, to being self sufficient and handling small jobs completely on my own.  This is all great and is the kind of growth I would expect to have over 5 years of experience, but it's a little frustrating when the company has been on a pay freeze during this time, so I'm still being paid the same amount I was when I knew basically nothing.  Doing more for less.  Prime example.  Especially when you consider that the cost of living has still been increasing, which means I really am getting paid less than I was my first year on the job.  Frustrating.  Deeply.  So come on economy, I don't know how much more I can take!

On top of this minor annoyance with my professional life, I got dealt a pretty big blow a couple months ago when I found out that the one person I looked up to more than anyone at my office was leaving.  Whaaaaaaaaaat??  He was the person that actually made me feel appreciated and he taught me so much...how could he possibly leave me!?  He was the guy who interviewed me when I applied for the job and the person I worked most closely with.  He was smart, funny, down to earth, easy to work with and someone everyone respected.  He was a friend.  He still is a friend.  We've kept in touch since he moved on, and I don't doubt that we will continue to be friends, but the work environment is nowhere near the same.  He was a big part of the company and his leaving changed some of the dynamic in the office.  It's just not the same, and it never will be as it was, and that is a hard truth for me to swallow, but I'm adjusting as best I can.

You know what else is a drag?  Getting older.  Yeah...I said it.  It gets harder and harder to stay in shape, and easier and easier to fall out of shape.  I need to start running again as it's been far too long since I've done any regular running.  A couple summers ago I was running a 3 mile loop on the river trail twice a week.  In fact, another one of the reasons I was really excited to move to our sweet new house was that it was just a little more than a half mile off the river trail that I like to run.  To date, I've only done the loop from our new house once in over a year of living here.  It ends up being right around 4.25 miles, and it is a beautiful run, but I really dropped the ball lately.  I do have a couple of excuses factors that kept me from running last summer.  First, when we moved to our new place, Jason bought me a sweet mountain bike (I had to have one since we lived right on the mountain biking trails) and I spent a good amount of time riding instead of running.  There were also cougar sighting warnings (and I do mean the predatory cats, not the older predatory women) in the area I like to run.  Call me chicken, but I'm not a fan of the idea of being a cougar snack.  I'm NOT a fast runner and I like to run alone...with my headphones on.  If that doesn't sound like the description of a potential cougar mauling victim, I don't know what does.

It was a beautiful, sunny and warm day today.  I was honestly tempted to do some running this afternoon, but ended up instead in a coffee shop drinking a non-fat mocha, writing this blog.  In my defense, a new blog post is really overdue, and I already had plans to go mountain biking with Jason this evening.  Seeing as how it was my first ride of the season, I thought my legs would appreciate not doing a run and a ride in the same day, and that Jason would appreciate me not being exhausted within the first 5 minutes of our ride.  I was right.  It felt good to get back out there and enjoy my bike, even when both legs began cramping on the final climb out of the river canyon on our way home.  I'm definitely going to feel this tomorrow.  Who am I kidding?  I can already feel it.  Boot camp tomorrow night should be fun.*

I do need to get out and do more running though as I really want to run a half marathon this summer.  I also have another motivation to get back into shape - I'm going to be a bridesmaid in my friend's wedding this September.  I cannot even tell you how badly I do NOT want to be the fat bridesmaid.  All her other bridesmaids are these tiny, little women and if something doesn't change, I'll look Amazonian standing next to them.  Well, except for the height thing.  I would be a short Amazonian.  I'm sure they exist.  So that is some good motivation.  If that isn't enough, I also need to get my booty (well, more than just my booty...but you know what I mean) back in shape because Jason and I have decided (and by Jason and I, I mostly mean I decided and told Jason) that we are going to start trying to...well...make a baby this fall.  It's become clear that I'm not getting any younger, and we now have the family house and the family car - so all we are missing is an actual family.  My carefree days of sleeping in are ticking away...

Another not-so-fun factor about getting older...having to deal with the skin damage that I inadvertently caused my pasty white self through the years.  I've always tried to be good about using sunscreen and have accepted the fact that I will never be tan.  In fact, my only hope at this point is that one day all my freckles will merge and voila! I'll be tan.  It's happening...slowly.  Despite my best efforts, I've still caused some damage that came to my attention.  About a year ago I noticed a pink spot on my chest.  I didn't think much of it at the time, as it looked like I had scratched myself.  It was a little dry and kind of scabby (isn't that a pleasant visual image??), but it was healing up nicely.  It would just about be gone, and then it would get all dry and scabby again and the cycle would start over.  I finally decided it was time to see a dermatologist after having lost a friend last year to cancer at the young age of 24 and then hearing about a young lady who was on the soccer team in Boise losing her battle with skin cancer earlier this year.  It became clear that I could no longer ignore this problem, as it was NOT going away on its own.  I should insert here that I am one of those people who never goes to doctors.  I've lived in Bend for almost 5 years now and still don't have a general physician.  I've been fortunate enough to stay relatively healthy, aside from some occasional nasty colds which my coworkers were so generous to share with me.  I'm the person who refuses to take anything for a headache, unless it is so bad that it becomes incapacitating.  I'm weird like that.  So making an appointment was a pretty big step for me.

The dermatologist did a full body scan on me and luckily the only area of concern was the spot on my chest. She told me that they would need to do a biopsy on it, but that she was pretty sure that it was skin cancer.  She must have noticed the blood drain from my face because she quickly went on to say that it was the "good kind" of skin cancer.  I wish I was kidding, but she actually said that.  I was not aware that there was such a thing as "good" skin cancer.  At this point, I was looking at her pretty skeptically, so she proceeded to tell me that "if I had to have any kind of skin cancer, this would be the one that I would want."  Boy, is that ever comforting.  Honestly though, it is the most common kind of skin cancer and really quite treatable and the fact is, it really shouldn't be all that surprising to me since both of my parents have been treated for this same exact thing.  Two days later I got the call confirming that it is in fact Basal Cell Carcinoma (the "good" kind) and that I am lucky because it is very superficial.  What this means is that I have multiple treatment options.

The first option is what they call 'Scrape and Burn.'  Really?!!  Who goes with this option?  It sounds horrible!!  Basically they do exactly that, scrape off the infected cells and then cauterize the wound.  <*Shudder*>.  She explained to me that this would leave a round, white scar.  Lovely.  Next option please?  Incision.  Guess what that option entails.  Yup, cutting the infected cells out.  The benefit to this option is that they make sure to cut enough cells out that they get a border of healthy cells to ensure that they got it all.  They actually send off the cells to be tested, making this the most successful method at removing all the infected cells.  The other benefit to this method is it will only leave a small, vertical scar.  The bad thing about this method is that it involves cutting and stitching.  Ack!  I've never gone under the knife before my biopsy, and I was incredibly nervous as that was happening, and it required NO stitching.  The thing is, I kind of have this...aversion.  To needles.  So this means having to deal with getting a local anesthetic administered via a needle to the chest.  This was terrifying when I had the biopsy done.  When you've got a needle in your chest, your immediate thought is that you should hold completely still.  Unfortunately, it takes a while to administer the anesthetic, and it is impossible to hold your breath that long when you are that anxious, but breathing is SCARY because it requires moving your chest.  Yeah, this is what was going through my mind during the shot.  It's completely ridiculous, I know.  So if I make it through that ordeal again, I get to look forward to getting stitched up in the end.  I've never had stitches.  What's worse, is that I would need TWO sets of stitches.  One set that dissolves that is placed under the surface of the skin, and another normal set on the surface that I would need to come back and have removed.  I can't even tell you how queasy it makes me to think about this stuff.  The final option is a topical chemo cream.  It is something that I would need to apply nightly for 5 nights in a row.  I would then take two nights off and then resume the treatment for 5 nights.  This would have to go on for 6 weeks.  The plus side of this is that it requires no cutting, stitching, scraping or burning.  It would leave no scar, aside from what may result from the biopsy.

At first this sounded pretty good, except that the more I thought about it, the less appealing it became.  The idea of having cancer of any kind makes my heart race to think about.  Dragging out treatment for 6 weeks means I would have to live with it that much longer and I just want to get this over with.  It also has the lowest success rate at completely removing all the infected cells.  80%.  That is pretty good, but there isn't any guarantee like there is with the lab tested method of the incision.  Also, I started reading about some of the side effects of the cream and they didn't seem all that appealing.

Ultimately I decided on the incision.  It seemed the obvious choice once I thought about it, despite the fact that it forces me to face some pretty major fears.  My appointment is on Wednesday and I know I'll feel better once it's over, and that I'll get through it.  For crying out loud it is only an hour long treatment...I can do it.  I can.


To top off this stress, I finally caved in and signed up to take the first of my exams needed in order to obtain my architectural license.  I really hate testing, but I can't put off the exams any longer since I want to get them over and done with before having kids around to make studying more difficult.  Since we are going to start 'trying' this fall, that means I need to get my tests underway.  This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I'm a terrible test taker.  It doesn't matter how much I study or how well I know the subject...as soon as I'm asked a question, my mind goes blank.  I can know the answer, but once put under the pressure of needing to produce the answer, it always eludes me.  If I'm lucky, I can move on to other questions and hope that the answer comes back to me in time.  To add even more pressure, there are SEVEN tests that I have to take, each over 200 bucks a pop.  That's some pretty serious moolah.  The good thing is that my boss will reimburse me the test cost for each test I pass.  This is fantastic, except that it puts even more pressure on because I literally can NOT afford to fail.  What's even better is that if you do fail a test, you have to wait 6 months or something crazy like that in order to retake it.  I do NOT have time for that.

Honestly, when I look back on this last year, I really can't complain.  I've been very fortunate and for the most part am happy with where I am with my life.  Naturally there are things I'd like to change, but isn't that the case for everyone?  Keep your fingers crossed for me that I can get though this needle phobia that I'm going to face this week, and that I can kick my first test's butt on June 4th.  Really, it would be quite awful to start off my testing by failing the very first one.  I can do it, I can do it.  I.  CAN. DO. IT!!!

Finally, I want to thank you all, my family and friends for all the love and support you have given me throughout the years.  Every single one of you have impacted my life and helped shape the person I am today, and I just so happen to be quite proud of that person.  I love you guys.

*UPDATE 5/1/12 - Last night at boot camp was grueling.  Of course it was a major leg exercise workout that involved holding the 'squat position' for as long as possible in between doing a whole bunch of other exercises.  It was a partner workout and one would squat for as long as they could while the other did kettle bell swings, or tire flips, or something along those lines.  So when the person could no longer squat any longer, we would switch places.  We had so many of each exercise that we had to do, like 50 tire flips and 300 kettle bell swings, so we would just keep switching off until we were finished.  I felt really bad for my partner because towards the end, I was having a REALLY hard time holding a squat.  As soon as I got down into the squat position, my left leg would completely cramp up, just as it did on my bike ride the night before.  I was pretty worthless at holding a squat at that point.

UNDERSTANDING LOSS

This is not a warm, fuzzy post.  It is not witty or fun or light hearted, but is coming from my devastated and grieving heart.  It is my attempt to console myself by pouring my thoughts and feelings out in hope that it lightens this burden on my soul.  This is me, doing what I can to cope with the unpleasantries of life.

One week ago yesterday Jason and I had to put our beloved Cameo down.  She was a difficult dog, but there wasn't an unloving or disloyal bone in her old, frail body.  She loved my husband almost to a fault, as it would drive him crazy at times when she would get up to follow him around the house when he was only walking from the couch to the refrigerator and back to refill a glass of water.  Or when he would be laying on the couch watching a movie, and she would sit on the floor next to him, staring at him and panting with that unbelievable foul breath of hers.  Don't get me wrong, my husband loved this dog and did more for her than most would tolerate, but she was a rescue dog with a past that made her fairly neurotic and generally uneasy.

Jason and I came to Bend, Oregon in the summer of 2006.  Jason had just graduated and had a job offer with a very promising company working in renewable energy.  I had one year of grad school remaining and had managed to land an internship with an architecture firm for the summer.  Other than the handful of interviews that Jason had come over for, neither or us had much knowledge of Bend, but from what I had read, it seemed like a wonderful, up-and-coming place.  We ended up renting a house in what we would come to learn was the armpit of town.  The location was sketchy at best and was only about a block and a half away from where the train tracks crossed a very busy road.  Nothing like being awoken at 2am to the sound of the crossing arms coming down across the road, "Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!" followed by the sound of the train's whistle blasting "WHOOOOOOO-WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" and finally the screeching metal and clanging of the train barreling down the tracks.  And yet, even in this less than ideal living situation, we fell in love with Bend, Oregon.  We were there for less than 2 months when we realized this is where we wanted to be and we started searching for a home of our own (away from the tracks).

We put an offer in just before I was headed back to school for the fall, which was accepted.  The closing process was quick and painless and Jason got the keys to our new home at the end of September.  He moved in with his two friends, Ricky and Jordan, who planned to live with him and help with the mortgage until I moved back out to Bend for good in May.  Jason was barely in the house for a month when I got the news that he had adopted a dog.  At first I was a little angry that he had made the decision to get a dog without consulting with me.  Not that I would have objected to a dog as I love them, but just that he got one without me, that he didn't wait until I had finished school and moved in so that we could get one together.  He was so happy to have a dog, that I couldn't be mad for long.  I knew he had been wanting one for some time, but being in school just wasn't conducive to caring for a dog.

He told me her name was Cameo and that she was found roaming in a field somewhere and was brought to a rescue organization.  She was a red heeler and they were guessing that she was around 2 years old.  She wasn't fond of strangers or other dogs and she spooked at loud noises and fast movements.  Her complexes could only be summed up to the result of years of abuse.  It broke my heart to see how she would cower and run when I picked up a broom to sweep.  She loved treats but never really took to chewing on raw hide or bones.  She was really good on a leash, but didn't understand the concept of playing such as fetching a ball or tugging on a rope.  Despite our best efforts to socialize her and teach her to play, she was most content just walking with Jason or simply being by his side.

It became apparent after a couple years that the original estimation of her being 2 years old when Jason got her was off by a few years.  We used to take her hiking and backpacking with us, but we started to notice her slowing down, and on one particular three mile hike to a lake, she would actually stop altogether when she found some shade to lie in and would simply refuse to move until she regained her energy.  From then on we limited her exercise to daily walks in the park down the street from our house.

A year or so later while Jason was out of town for work, I was taking Cameo for one of her walks in the park when she started stumbling and not quite picking up her feet.  She looked like what I would imagine a drunk dog would look like walking home after a Friday night bender.  She began panting and collapsed at one point.  I didn't know what was going on, but I sat with her in the park until she had the energy to get up and make our way home.  She stumbled her way back to the house and ran into the gate before I could open it, like she didn't even see it there.  I knew something pretty serious was wrong at this point.

After about 5 minutes of her stumbling and pacing through the house, she laid down and passed out for a good while.  When she awoke, she was back to her normal self.  The next day I was nervous walking her, and saw signs of her starting to stumble again, so immediately cut the walk short and we went home.  Again she paced around the house in her clumsy way, often walking right into a corner, or trying to walk under a chair before she would change direction.  After 10 minutes she again fell asleep and woke up fine.  The following day, we cut her walk short and she was fine.  At this point, I thought that perhaps something was sprayed at the far side of the park for weeds that was causing her to have these mini seizures as she only seemed to have them when we walked to that part of the park.

For a time, we stopped walking there and she was fine, until we were visiting Jason's parents and she started stumbling down the road while we were out for a walk.  We realized then that there was something wrong with her, and it wasn't any sort of pesticide that was causing this.  Jason took her to the vet, and after a series of tests and blood work, it was determined that she was hypoglycemic, meaning that her blood sugar would drop, causing the seizures.  We changed her diet, so that she was being fed high quality, special food throughout the day to keep her blood sugar even, and we reduced her exercise to a couple small walks per day.  This worked for a while, until she decided to stop eating.  We tried changing her food, mixing cookies into it and other treats, as well as canned food.  She would be interested in the change in food briefly, but would soon be over it and wanted nothing to do with it.  This brought on more seizures.  Jason talked to the vet again, and they put her on medication for her condition.  This increased her appetite and stopped the seizures.  It was a miraculous drug.

Everything seemed to be going well for some time, until she suddenly, and out of nowhere had a Grand Mal seizure.  This was scary, as she was on the ground kicking, twitching and snapping while foaming at the mouth.  It lasted for a couple minutes before she snapped out of it and would do her pace around the house routine before laying down and sleeping it all off.  Over the years, this started happening more and more frequently as her general health, hearing and sight degraded and we came to the conclusion that yet again, she was probably a lot older than we were previously assuming.

The vet was at a loss as to why she was having these Grand Mal seizures and said that more testing would need to be done until they could find a the cause, at which point, surgery would probably be needed.  Being at the age and health that she was, we knew we could not put Cameo through surgery, and since she seemed to be fine and happy and only having the seizures once every 4-8 weeks, we turned down the additional testing.

Every so often, Cameo would go through some hard times where she would have multiple seizures in a day, and I would think, "How on earth is this dog surviving this?"  But she would bounce back every time and be fine again for weeks, falling right back into her regular routine of eating, sleeping, licking her paws (and the carpet) and following Jason around like his shadow. 

Watching her health degrade so much over such a short period of time was devastating.  When Jason first got her, we thought we would have a good ten years with her, but we knew in this last year that our time was running out.  We were aware that she wasn't going to be around much longer, and every time she had a seizure I would think "This is it.  Her little heart is just going to give out,"  but it never did.  She was a fighter and it was clear that she wasn't ready to be done with life.  No sooner would I think that she was close to the end, would her health improve and I'd be left thinking that she was just gonna plod along this way for years to come.

Last Friday night was one of those tough nights in that she had one of her seizures as we were getting ready for bed.  She had been doing so well for so long, that the seizure kind of took me by surprise.  Again she fought through it, and quickly nodded off to sleep for the night.  The next morning, we were cleaning the house in anticipation of the BBQ we were hosting that evening when Jason told me that Cameo had another seizure.  When I came over, she was out of her thrashing stage, but was in the twitching stage, where she wasn't quite conscious yet.  She usually would thrash for about a minute, then lay there breathing heavily and twitching for another minute before she would snap out of it and regain consciousness.  This time she stayed in the twitching stage for what seemed forever before she ended up going backwards back into the violent thrashing.  This was devastating to watch, and Jason and I sat for a long time watching her go back and forth between thrashing and twitching, hoping that she would snap out of it soon.  After some time, it became clear that she was not coming out of this on her own, so Jason carried her out to the car and took her to the emergency animal clinic in hopes that they could give her something to help.  After being there for around 30 or 40 minutes, I got the call that I needed to come down.

I somehow knew what was coming, from the moment I saw her go from twitching back to thrashing at the house, I had this voice in the back of my head saying 'This is it,' but I never fully gave up hope.  She had proven me wrong so many times before and she was such a fighter.  When I came, she was on a blanket in the back pumped full of drugs to stop the seizures, but she was still not conscious or aware of her surroundings.  Jason's face was puffy, red and covered in streams of tears when he explained to me that they thought she had a brain tumor, and that the only thing we could do would be to take her to Portland for an MRI, and if they confirmed the tumor, they would need to operate.  We both knew that brain surgery was not an option for this poor old dog, and we knew what had to be done.  Knowing what needed to be done didn't make it any easier when the doctor came and asked what we wanted to do.  We didn't WANT to put her down, even though we knew we had to.  Saying the words was next to impossible.  Our dog was a fighter, and I always thought that one day her little heart would just give out and that would be it.  Being the one to actually END her fight seemed wrong and unfair, but it was clear that she was not coming out of this seizure, and it was cruel to let her suffer anymore. 

They put us in a private room with her so we could spend some time with her and say our goodbyes.  The doctor came in and gave us some paperwork to fill out in order for them to perform the euthanization.  We filled everything out, handed it back and sat with Cameo, petting her while she remained awake but unconscious.  After some time, her medication started wearing off and she started to thrash again.  It was heartbreaking to see, but was a good reaffirmation that she was not going to pull through this one on her own.  In the middle of her seizing, the doctor came to perform the euthanization.  When she saw Cameo seizing again, she hurried over to get started.

It was strange.  Part of me thought that she would wait for her to stop seizing to do it.  I'm not sure why I thought this, but I also hoped for it as well.  Even though she was not truly conscious in-between the seizures, I felt she was there more than she was when she was actually seizing, and part of me wanted her to know that we were there with her, holding her paw so to speak at her last moments.  Watching them inject the pink fluid into her I.V. all I could think was "No, no, no, I'm not ready yet!"  At the same time, I knew we needed to take her out of the suffering she was going through with the seizure.  Performing the euthanization during her seizure also made it painfully clear when her time ended, as she suddenly just stopped moving.  I knew I wanted to be there for her, but it was a horrid thing to watch, and it took only a moment to know that the deed was done.  I wanted to scream out.  How could our little fighter of a dog be gone?  No matter how prepared I thought I was for that moment, my mind, heart and soul shattered watching her go still.

We sat with her for a good long time working through our emotions and realizations that she was not coming home with us.  We prepared to leave on a couple different occasions, but would inevitably break into more sobs at the idea of walking out the door without her.  For some reason, that was the hardest part.  We knew she was already gone, hopefully to a better place, yet the idea of walking away from her body was gut-wrenching.

In the days to follow, I went through some hard times.  Jason was gone on a bike ride most of Sunday, and I was home alone for a good part of the day.  My mind had a hard time accepting that Cameo was gone.  I would see movement out of the corner of my eye and would look over, fully expecting to see Cameo, but it was one of the cats, or a shadow or something.  It broke my heart over and over, each time I realized that it would never be Cameo that I would look over and see again.

Watching my husband mourn was devastating.  As much as I loved that dog, she was his first pet all of his own, of whom he was responsible for, and he loved her immensely.  Holding him while he sobbed in my arms was possibly the most helpless feeling in the world.  What could I say or do to make this better?  There is no 'making this better.'  I could only assure him that he was good to her and was a very loving father, but it was hard when his guilt took over for being annoyed or aggravated with her from time to time.  I assured him that it was normal to be frustrated once in a while, and that it didn't make him a bad person, and it didn't make her love him any less.

Then came my own feelings of guilt.  I knew for some time that she was approaching the end of her life and when Jason would make a comment about how much it was going to cost, or how hard it would be on Cameo to have to board her for ten days while we go on vacation in October, a part of me would think that it was very possible that she just may not live that long.  Then there were the dark thoughts that would somehow crawl their way into my head that had me thinking, 'maybe it would be easier if she did just pass on before we went on that trip so we wouldn't have to worry about her.'  I cannot say how ashamed I felt to think those thoughts, or how much that thought makes my stomach turn now that she is gone.  What a heartless thing to think, as I would trade all the trouble and worry to have her around now that she is gone.

There is a hole in my heart, one I wasn't truly expecting to have.  She was always Jason's dog, though I loved her and I'm sure she cared very much for me, but it was always him she was excited to see.  I didn't expect to feel such a void with her gone.  I finally got my own dog back in May, and it was so nice for a while that we each had a dog.  We would walk them together at night, whereas before, I rarely accompanied Jason on his walks with Cameo.  Now we are back to having one dog, and it pains me every time we go to take our nightly walk, as I know Jason is missing his regular walking buddy.  Jason had fallen into such a routine with her, that it is a hard pill to swallow knowing that everything has changed.  It's a strange sensation, as we knew her time was coming to an end, and yet at the same time, it feels like someone pulled a rug out from under us.  We knew she wouldn't be around forever, but we never really imagined how much it would change our lives once she was gone.

Everyone has been very supportive, reassuring us that we did the right thing, and deep down, I know we did.  They say she is in a better place, and I really hope that she is.  Then I start over thinking things, as I'm known to do from time to time.  I always thought that animals also go to Heaven, and I when one of our pets died when I was growing up, my mom would comfort us by saying that our beloved pet had just rejoined some of our previous pets or family members that had passed on, and that they were being taken care of and loved.  When I think about Cameo, this pulls at my heart because there were no other pets that were her friends.  She didn't care about other dogs or cats or even other people...she just loved Jason, unconditionally, and he can't be up in Heaven with her.  So who is there for her?  How can she possibly be in a better place when her whole world revolved around Jason and nothing else, and they can no longer be together?  I know it's a horrible way to think, and I shouldn't do it to myself, but I can't help it.

My mind isn't right at the moment.  It's swirled full of emotions and memories.  I think that it isn't fair for a dog who was so sweet and trusting and loving with us, Jason especially, to have such a rough end to her life when she had to endure who knows what kind of abuse for the first years of her life.  In the end, we came to think that she had to be around 13 years old, and we only had 5 years with her.  That means that she spent around 7 years of her life, a good portion of it in an unhealthy situation before she was rescued.  I think about how it isn't fair.  She deserved better, she was a good dog.

Our last weekend with her, the Saturday previous to having to have her put down, we were all camping together at Newberry Crater.  It was a beautiful weekend and we sat out enjoying the sunset and then the starlight before calling it a night.  Once in the tent, Jason asked me to give Cameo her pill, which we wrap in some cheese or lunch meat for her.  I went to give it to her and the old dog bit me.  In her old age, she has lost most of her sight, so she began to start snapping when being fed a treat because she could no longer see it.  It also didn't help that she became more snappy when we got the other dog, as she was afraid that she might lose her treat to the younger dog if she wasn't fast enough.  While trying to give her her pill, she snapped out and caught my pinkie and chomped down.  She was not giving it up and I had to pry her teeth off my finger with my free hand, swearing throughout the process.  I had some indentations in my pinkie nail and she broke the skin just above the nail.  It hurt like hell and I was so mad at her for doing it.  Now I look at my pinkie and the little scab there, and I dread the day when the scab heals up and is gone.  I feel like it is my one little physical reminder that I keep with me always of our poor old dog who couldn't see and feared her treat being stolen.  If I could, I would keep the scab with me forever, but I know that the wound was not bad enough to scar, and that it will soon be gone.  The thought of that pains me.  Why should I dread the healing of a scab?  It is the strangest thing, but it feels like a small part of her is still here with me and I just don't want to let go.

For some reason, Cameo started to lose her hair in this last year, so we only put her collar on her when we were outside the house, as it was rubbing away all the hair around her neck.  When Jason rushed her off to the emergency clinic, we didn't think to grab her collar or leash as we just didn't need it since she couldn't even walk.  Both the collar and leash still sit in their normal spot in the top drawer by our patio doors, where we would grab it as we headed out to walk her.  I just don't have the heart to pull it out.  What am I to do with it?  I know we don't need it anymore, and there are better uses for that drawer, but I can't bring myself to even open the drawer and look at it.  I wonder if there will ever be a time when I can.  I can't fathom it at the moment - it's just too hard.

As I type now, I look up to see her photograph come up on our digital picture frame sitting in the office.  She looks happy in the photo, which is how I want to remember her.  I pray that she is in a better place and that she understands that we ended her fight out of love, and that we miss her and think of her often and fondly.  She is in our hearts, always.

UNDERSTANDING PEDAL POWER

One year ago today I found myself mounting my faithful Bianchi steed in the stadium parking lot at UW in Seattle, intending (and maybe a little hoping and praying thrown in) to cross the state of Washington and arrive in Portland, Oregon the following day.  Before setting off, I had many a moment where I thought "204 miles of bicycling, are you crazy Summer?!  That's just wrong!"  But then I would think "10,000 people do this every year and 10,000 people can't be wrong.  Can they?"

The bug was planted in my ear a year earlier when a couple friends signed up for this ride.  I am fairly positive I thought them crazy at the time, but when I told my husband about what they were doing, he thought it was fantastic.  I remember him asking me to tell them that if they were thinking about doing it again the next year, to let him know as he would love to do that ride.  All I could think at the time was "Ack.  Two days on the seat of a bicycle.  No thanks."

Flash forward about six months.  2009 had quietly bowed out and 2010 tiptoed in, along with the realization that I was turning thirty that year.  Honestly, at this point in my life I had never been more out of shape and embarrassed with what I had let myself become.  I was moderately depressed and the idea of turning 30 did nothing to help.  I decided that nobody was going to be able to get me out of this rut that I had managed to get myself into, and it was up to me to get myself out of it.  I promised myself that I would turn 30 and feel good about who I was, and that 30 had NOTHING on me!

Of course I made these decisions, and a month later had done very little to accomplish my goal.  Then came the word that sign-ups for the Seattle to Portland bike ride were coming up.  Somewhere along the way, my train of thought went from "I'm going to get back into shape and turn 30 and feel good about it." to "I'm going to get back into shape, turn 30 and do AMAZING things!  Things I've always wanted to do, or thought I would never be able to do.  I am going to do them this year."  So naturally, I decided that riding my reduced-sized butt across the state of Washington would not only be an amazing accomplishment, but it would also be a great motivator.  So Jason and I signed ourselves up for the ride and paid our nearly $100 entry fees.  No backing out now!

So of course this meant that I needed to get my butt in shape, or I would inevitably end up dead along some stretch of road between Seattle and Portland.  Great motivation.

I joined some boot camp classes, and what my gym called the "Summer Fat Loss Blast Off."  Basically, my first boot camp class, Beginner's Bootcamp, was six weeks of cutting all alcohol, sugar, salt and processed foods out of our diet while tracking what we ate daily on a food log and attending some kick butt, cross training style classes twice a week.  I'll admit that the 'no sugar' rule was the hardest for me.  Admittedly I have a pretty bad sweet tooth, so I knew this would be hard.  I routinely drink coffee every morning, but I can't drink it without cream and sugar, so without sugar my coffee was out.  And no, splenda and the likes were also not allowed.  The hardest part came in realizing that sugar was in EVERYTHING.  Seriously, just try to find a cereal without sugar, or a pasta sauce.  I couldn't even have ketchup on a homemade lean hamburger because it's loaded with sugar.  Needless to say, it was quite the eye opener.

I followed this 6-week class with an advanced bootcamp class, which then shows you how to add things like sugar and alcohol back into your life in moderate doses.  The problem was that I simultaneously signed up for that "Summer Fat Loss Blast Off" program, in which we join a team lead by a physical trainer, and our teams would square off against each other to see who had the highest overall, combined weight loss percentage at the end of 6 weeks.  This program required working out everyday, anywhere from 30 or 40 minutes to up to 3 hours and also had some fairly strict diet regulations, which meant I still couldn't have sugar, salt, alcohol, etc.  That, combined with my Beginner Bootcamp resulted in 12 weeks without sugar, which was HUGE for me.  This was a serious test for my will power, and amazingly I surprised even myself with how strong I was.  In all honestly, I was the ONLY person on my team who didn't have a single piece of candy on Easter.  It really was a devastating Easter without Cadburry in my life, BUT, I survived!  I also vividly remember my entire office going across the street for margaritas one day to celebrate a job, and I alone stayed behind.  Not only was I not getting a margarita (which sounded amazing), but I had to look out the window and see all my colleagues sitting out on the patio enjoying the sunshine while I finished up work in the office.  Granted, I could have gone home for the day or could have just gone and sat with them and drank some iced tea or water, but I had stuff to do and had to cram work in when I could so that I had time to do my 3 hours of gym time that were often required after work.  It also seemed that anyone and everyone who baked was bringing goodies into the office.  Did they all know that I wasn't allowed to have them and liked to watch me sigh at their delicious looking cookies and cupcakes as I walked by?  Seriously...I amazed myself.  I learned that if I had something set in my mind, that I was going to abide by it.  It also helped that the "Summer Fat Loss Blast Off" was a competition, and I am extremely competitive.

At the end of the 6-week fat loss program I lost 10.6 lbs, 3.5% body fat, 1/4" off my neck, 2-3/4" in my chest, 5" IN MY WAIST, 1-1/4" in my hips, 2-3/4" in my thighs, 1/2" in my calves, and and 1-1/2" in my upper arms.  There wasn't a ton of weight lost, but there was a ton of toning.  In total between bootcamp and the fat loss program, I lost about 24 pounds, and had MUCH more energy and stamina, AND I learned to run.

I've never been a fan of running and was in fact one of those who would say "only if someone is chasing me," but I found trail running and fell in love and at the end of my fat loss program, actually ran 9 miles.  For this reason, I signed myself up to run my first 10k on my birthday.  It was fantastic and felt like a great way to kick the big 3-0 in the pants.  Take that thirty!  Even when I was 17 and in the best shape of my life I couldn't run 6 miles, and definitely would not have done so willingly, especially on my birthday.

With all this, I was still nervous about my Seattle to Portland (STP) ride.  I had got a great deal on the previous year's model Bianchi road bike at a local bike shop at the beginning of the year and had taken it out for quite a few rides, getting comfortable with it.  With all the other exercise I had been doing though, I was nowhere close to what the training schedule said I should be riding, and when it came time to head up to Seattle for STP, the longest ride I had been on to date was a mere 36-miler.  Part of me was okay with this.  I had this thought that I could do a 100 mile ride and hate it, and then I would be stuck dreading the STP ride.  I thought that I would rather go into it ignorantly blissful about the whole thing so that I could look forward to it.  Should I come to hate myself half way through, well, then I would just have too keep pushing, and I knew I would finish.

So there I am, a year ago, in the parking lot with thousands of people, preparing to set off for what would surely be my biggest adventure.  Excited?  Yes.  Nervous?  Of course, but there is something exhilarating about doing something so big and being a part of something like this with so many other people.  So we cued up and soon we were riding through the streets of Seattle.  Quite the spectacle to see these normally bustling roads closed down to cars and taken over by bicycles.  The scenery was beautiful and the weather started off a little chilly, but the early morning marine layer soon burned off and the sun felt good.

Our first food stop was a spectacle.  It was still early in the ride and so many people were there.  Thousands of bicycles scattered across the grass as people stood in line at the port-a-potties and the food tables.  It is amazing the sense of camaraderie you get with thousands of strangers when you all set off on an adventure such as this.  And let me tell you, there are some amazing people who partake.  We came across a couple paraplegics riding bicycles that you pedal with your arms.  Seeing them crank up a hill was inspiring to say the least.  There was also a guy on a unicycle...such determination as those things only have one speed.  We also came across a group that had built this contraption of three bikes somehow linked together with one steering wheel.  It is hard to describe, but they always got lots of attention when they rolled into one of the rest stops.

By the time we rolled into camp that first night, I was exhausted and excited to have come thus far.  We camped just a little beyond the halfway point, which helped because we knew that we had less distance to travel the second day.  Mind games...we knew how to play them.  Setting up our tent among the hundreds at the park we stayed at was quite the sight, and the spaghetti feed hit the spot.  We sat out in the sun, gorging ourselves with real food (we have been eating bread, fruit, cheese, energy bars, cookies, etc. all day long) and couldn't have been happier.  Getting out of our padded bike shorts and into some real clothes after a shower was bliss.  Fed, clean and exhausted, we slept like logs. 

The next morning we got up and had ourselves some pancakes, ham and eggs and packed up camp to hit the road again.  The only problem was that my right knee was killing me, which was funny because my left one was the one that had gotten a little achy at the end of our ride the previous day.  We got onto our bikes, and needless to say, our tailbones were none-too-pleased about it either (seeing as how both Jason and I have fractured our tailbones in the past).  We decided that we were definitely going to need some drugs to get through this second day.  About 20 miles outside of camp, we rolled into a little town with a store that was open on Sunday morning.  Bless them.  We got some drugs, and thank goodness we did because that was pretty much what got me through the day.

At our first food stop, I was really looking forward to getting off the bike for a while and laying out.  Unfortunately, it was still freezing.  The clouds hadn't burned off yet for the day and there was a slight breeze.  This was fine for while we were on the bikes, but armed only with a very light weight, very breathable jacket (thin enough to compact down to the size of a baseball to store in my small Camelbak backpack) it was far too cold to be sitting still.  Laying on the grass shaking in the cold turned out to be surprisingly less appealing than being on the bike and warm, so as soon as we finished getting some food into us, we left.

Stopping for a bathroom break a little later in the day, we decide to check the air pressure in our tires to find that one of Jason's tires has a small ballooned spot in the side wall.  Not good.  Armed with spare tubes but not spare tires, Jason talks with the bike repair tent there to find that they had only high end tires for sale, and they didn't take credit cards and I didn't even have my debit/ATM card to withdraw money with.  So with a limited amount of cash between the two of us, Jason takes the advice of another bicyclist and folds up a dollar bill inside the wall of his tire to add some stability and to keep the tube from pushing out on that weakened spot of the sidewall.  This seems to work, luckily, but I'm not thrilled with the idea of him riding around on a faulty tire.  If it decided to blow, it could mean a pretty nasty wreck at the speeds we were going.  Luckily about 10 or 15 miles down the road, we came across another bike repair tent with tires we could afford, so we get Jason fixed up and back in business.  All this tire repair business ended up taking about an hour out of our day, but we trudged on.

One of the most memorable moments of the ride was on the second day as we crossed the Longview bridge from Washington into Oregon.  We reached the base of the bridge and again were cued up on a side road with hundreds of bicyclists.  Once enough of us were there, they closed the bridge to car traffic and sent us up and over and on our way.  It was amazing to see that many people on bicycles taking over the bridge.  It was a slow process chugging up and over, and the bursts of cheers as we passed under the 'Welcome to Oregon' sign had me simply vibrating from head to toe.  On the Washington side, there wasn't much of a view of the bridge, but once we crossed over to Oregon and looked back, it was incredible to see how high above the water it was and to know that we just pedaled over it.  With that many people and that much excitement going over the bridge, I didn't even realize at the time the amount of climbing I was doing.  Now, every time I drive over that bridge, I reminisce about the time I pedaled my way across.

About three quarters of the way through day two, I was thrilled to reach the last food stop.  The sun had come out and I was exhausted at this point.  Some food and recharging in the sun was exactly what I needed.  I was still a little slow coming out of that food stop, but as soon as I saw Portland up in the distance, I got my second wind.  I'm pretty sure we hit every single red light on our way through Portland to the finish line, but the fact that I was in Portland, that I had, for all intents and purposes made it to Portland had me smiling from ear to ear.  Naturally we get stopped at the stop light one block down from the finish line.  We can see it.  We can hear them because they can see us and are cheering us on.  When that light turned green, I clipped my foot back into my pedal and had forgotten about any and all pain I was experiencing as I closed the gap, 50, then 30, then 15, then only 5 feet from crossing the finish line.

As I crossed, my throat got tight and my vision blurred as I got a little choked up at the thought that I DID IT!!  Not even a year ago I considered this an impossible feat - something only a crazy person would do.  Well call me crazy, I got it done!  I don't think I've ever been more proud to finish something.  Sure lots of people graduate high school and college, and I'm not about to say that college was by any means easy, but who rides their bicycle 204 miles across the state of Washington?  Well, I guess 10,000 people every year, which is a lot.  Still, I had to overcome both physical and emotional boundaries to get to that point - to get to that finish line.  It was a life changer for me.  I can do anything I set my mind to, I just have to want it bad enough. 

So my question for myself and everyone who may be reading this is, what do I want in my life and how badly do I want it?  Believe in yourself because nine times out of ten, you are the only one standing in your way.

Best of luck to all my bicycling friends who are pedaling their way across Washington as I type.  Enjoy the adventure!

(To see the professional photos I couldn't afford to buy of me riding, follow this link - http://www.marathonfoto.com/index.cfm?RaceOID=28052010M1&LastName=OMAN&BibNumber=7081&Mailing=25048)

UNDERSTANDING FICTION

I spent my childhood doing a great many things; from playing dolls to imagining I was an Indian living by the neighboring stream to practicing gymnastics and even pretending I was a mermaid swimming in our pool.  Among all this I also managed to find time to read.  Try as I might, I can only really remember reading one book series through my childhood, and that was The Baby-sitters Club.  I was particular about what I enjoyed reading then, and I can't say that much has changed from then to now.

I went through what I'll call a 'reading for fun drought' for a large portion of my youth.  I can't recall exactly when it started, but I would wager that it was somewhere around 6th or 7th grade - probably when I outgrew my precious Baby-sitters Club.  Through junior high and high school, I found myself wrapped up in other hobbies and interests to keep me busy and yet I still found myself try on a handful of occasions to sit down and read...to no avail.  Maybe it was my book choices, but I wasn't drawn into the stories.  Again I tried in college and found that I could be really interested in the story and yet I would read a couple pages and realize that I had no idea what I just read.  Crazy right?  It's like my brain couldn't or wouldn't allow me to concentrate on one thing.  I had trained my brain to multitask...unconsciously.  I would be reading and a page or so later find that I was thinking about ideas for the project I was working on, or going over the grocery list in my head, and then I would snap back to the story and realize that even though I had been reading the words on the page, I didn't comprehending them.  My mind was elsewhere so what I read didn't stick.  This would lead to frustration as I would go back and reread over and over, till eventually I lost my patience and would give up and put the book down.

I would hear about my mom or friends really enjoying a good book and become jealous.  I wanted to read, but believed I had some kind of attention deficit disorder that was keeping me doing so.  Finally being done with school and with the wedding come and gone, I decided to pick up a book and give reading another shot.  Funny thing, just as I was contemplating this idea, my mother-in-law sent me a chain letter of sorts.  Now, I'm not usually one to pass on chain mail, and honestly neither was she, but this one was different, interesting and fun.  The idea was that you send an old book from your library to to the person's address included with the letter.  Then you copy the letter and send it out to a handful of people with the name and address of the person who sent it to you, and your friends would then each send a book to that person, and they would send it out to their friends, who would in turn send me books.  In the end, if everything went perfectly, you were supposed to receive something like 25 new (used) books.  Well, this sounded like a perfect way to jump into reading, since I had absolutely no idea where to start on my own.  Needless to say, others weren't quite so enthused with the chain mail, so I think I only ended up with 2 books.  Still, somewhere to start.  So I read those books, and I actually quite enjoyed them, but then what?  Libraries and bookstores had SO MANY BOOKS!  I didn't even know what section to start in so picking out a new book became an overwhelming task.

I started talking to some friends, who were my husband's coworkers' wives, and we decided to put together a book club.  Yay, now I have a healthy source of book recommendations and a reason to get together and socialize!  (I'm all for girl's nights.)  The book club was EXACTLY what I needed.  I've read so many different styles and types of books over the course of the last year, it's been amazing.  To give you and idea of the diversity of what we've read, here are the books that I can remember off the top of my head:

1.  The Symbol by Dan Brown
2.  The Host by Stephanie Meyer
3.  The Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons (A graphic Novel) 
4.  Are You There, Vodka?  It's Me, Chelsea.  by Chelsea Handler
5.  One Thousand White Women:  The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus
6.  Morrigan's Cross by Nora Roberts(Book one of the Circle Trilogy)
7.  Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
8.  Fallen by Lauren Kate

Quite the variety and I've really enjoyed each of these books on different levels.  I will admit that I had a bit of difficulty getting through The Watchmen even though I've seen the movie and really enjoyed it.  The book was even on Time's Top 100 Reads list, but definitely doesn't make my top reads list.  Still, there were parts I really enjoyed and the whole concept of a graphic novel was really interesting to me.

Being that my book club is comprised completely of mom's - with the exception of yours truly - our schedules are a little erratic.  We started with good intentions of meeting every month, then it turned into every two months, and we pretty much didn't meet the whole of summer break last year.  This was causing some problems for me because suddenly I found myself addicted to reading and really valued having recommended reading.  How strange life is.  My opinion on reading for fun has done a complete 180, and I now find that I have a hard time falling asleep without doing some reading first.  I look forward to going to bed and being able to curl up with a good book. I might add that this is all much to my husband's dismay since I no longer cuddle up with him, but instead prop myself up on my alternative down pillow and settle in with my book of choice.

Since I was finishing my book club selections long before our next meeting, I had to find other books to read to fill the time.  Luckily, Morrigan's Cross by Nora Roberts was one of our early selections, and I quickly obtained the other three books in the series and thoroughly enjoyed them all.  I fell in love with Nora Roberts and found myself buying up every used copy of one of her books that I stumbled across (and there are plenty out there to be had).  There was something about Nora's characters I could relate to.  They were people I wanted to hang out with.  How did this happen?  I went from not being able to focus on what I'm reading, to being wrapped up in the story, to the point where I feel like I'm a part of these characters lives and the characters in turn are a part of mine.  Dare I say they became friends? 

Does that make me weird?  A little crazy?  Perhaps.  Truth is, when I finish a book that I really enjoy, especially a series when you really spend time with the characters, I get a little sad when it's over.  It's as if I just made some really great and interesting new friends, and then they all moved away and they never write or call.  What happens to them?  After the story is over, it is rarely truly over.  Not many stories end with the characters dying after a long full life.  I think the only movie (and I have to say movie because I haven't actually read the book...yet) I've seen where both the main characters pass away in their old age in the end is The Notebook.  Great movie, and I'm sure an excellent book, but most of the books I've been reading end with two people falling in love, finally coming to terms with the fact that they are madly in love and deciding to spend their lives with each other.  If' you've read any Nora Roberts, this is pretty much the plot line of all her books.  Two people fall in love and one, or both, hate to admit it, but in the end they always realize they can't live without each other...blah, blah, blah.  So predictable!  Why do I read this?  Better yet, why do so many read this?  Nearly every one of her books have been #1 New York Times best seller.  I, no WE - and when I say we, I mean the female population - are obsessed with love.  Is there anything better than falling in love?  Anything more eye opening than realizing that you simply cannot exist without this person in your life, and anything scarier than realizing that you have no idea if they feel the same way?  If they are in as deep?  Is there anything more soul crushing than losing your love?  It is such a dynamic time, and when you find that person that you can't live without, and learn that they feel the same way, life doesn't get any better.  So as we get further along in the relationship, the love is there and it grows as you learn to appreciate one another, but the dramatic ups and downs of new love tend to peter out.  The relationship and the feelings are no longer shiny and new and exciting.  The feelings may be stronger than ever, but nothing compares to young love.  That is why we read these books.  That is why Nora Roberts has well over 150 best sellers.  I pray that Jason and I will grow old and senile together (some of us becoming senile sooner than others) and I will never have to enter the dating world ever again.  But I can't deny that finding love is exhilarating, so I get my 'fix' through fiction.  Well written, relatable fiction.

I love the characters, I love the stories, but it pains me when I get to the last page and it's over.  I'm sad to lose those friends, to not be at their wedding, to never know if they started a family.  I know some people read and reread books over and over again, and I've kept all my books in the event that I get the urge someday to reread something, but it won't change how I'll feel in the end when I once again lose touch with my revisited friends.  When I'm still no closer to knowing what the rest of their lives hold for them.

Does this happen to anyone else?  Am I alone in these thoughts and feelings?  I've always been the emotional and sentimental type - which you would have some idea what I mean if you read my previous post about the holidays and the poor, little, unselected Christmas trees sitting in the tree lot on Christmas Eve - and I tend to have feelings for things that most normal people don't seem to care about.  So maybe I am a little screwed up inside.  Maybe I need to go get some help.  Do they have a group for people like me? FFA?  Fictional Friends Anonymous?  The first step is admitting I have a problem right?  Check.  Now what?  Oh to hell with it!  I've found that I love to read again, and read I shall!  So, to those few who may actually read this psycho, rambling non-sense, I'm calling it a night and am heading upstairs to curl up in my wonderfully amazing bed (which you would know about if you read my blog on my new mattress) and fully intend to crack open a new (used) Nora Roberts book and make some new friends.  I already know how it will end - love on their end, heartbreak on mine - but it is the journey that I enjoy the most!  Cheers!

UNDERSTANDING THE HOLIDAYS

Our Christmas Tree 2010

Whomever wrote the lyrics "It's the moooooost wonderful tiiiiiiiime of the yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaar" (just 'googled' this and found that it is two gentleman (funny, I would have thought it would have been a woman) by the names of Eddie Pola and George Wyle) is one (or I guess two) of the few people who truly relate to how I feel about the holiday season. There are so many things that I love about summertime; the warmth, the long days full of sunshine, camping, hiking, backpacking, kayaking, boating, riding bikes, running the river trail, etc., etc., but there is just something magical about Christmastime.  Seeing cars go down the road with Christmas Trees strapped to their roofs, the warm glow of Christmas lights speckling the neighborhood, the beauty of fresh fallen snow and the peaceful quiet it brings and the overwhelming and lighthearted joy I feel whenever I hear Christmas music playing are what make this time of year truly wonderful.  It is a part of my life that is steeped in family values and tradition.

 As a child, Christmas meant platefuls of cookies and candies, beautiful, sparkling lights and decorations, feasts fit for a king, getting together with the family, and of course, mountains of presents.  My sister and I were both pretty good as far as kids go, and we were heavily rewarded for our outstanding behaviour, not only by Santa, but by the rest of the family as well.  In the final weeks leading up to Christmas, we would watch eagerly as more and more beautifully wrapped presents would find their way under the tree.  My sister and I would dig through them every so often, rejoicing every time we found one with our names on it, and counting how many we each had.  This of course meant that our mom would have to make sure that we each had an equal number of presents, or else there would be some taunting and pouting going on between us kids...something along the lines of one of us being loved more, or being the 'favorite child.'  My poor parents. 

Christmas Eve meant laying in my bed trying desperately to fall asleep, fully knowing that the sooner I could fall asleep, the sooner it would be Christmas morning.  Despite my best efforts, I usually laid awake for hours, perking up every time I thought I heard the sound of hoofs on the rooftop.  Now, I've never been a morning person, even as a child, with the exception of Christmas morning.  As soon as my eyes fluttered open, I was up and out of bed, peeking to see if Santa had come.  Next stop was my parents bedroom to wake them, which usually resulted in them telling me that I needed to go back to bed, and that I could come wake them up when the little hand pointed at the 7.  That was torture unlike any other 'time-out.'  Could time move ANY slower??

Christmas morning meant that we could open our presents that Santa left us, then we tore ourselves away from playing with them long enough to eat some breakfast and get dressed.  Just after lunch, my Grandparents, Aunt and Uncle and my two cousins would show up, and then the real fun began.  That's when we all exchanged presents and the kids went crazy ripping open gift after gift, screaming in excitement at every toy and feigning appreciation for the sweaters and mittens.  The rest of the day was spent playing with shiny, new toys and ended with the feast of all feasts followed by pies, candies and cookies.

These days Christmas is looked forward to for different reasons.  Don't get me wrong, I still love the cookies and candies, the always delicious prime rib dinner, all the gorgeous decorations and of course the presents...but it's really the time with my family that I cherish most. 

My mom has always made a big event out of Christmas, with decorations aplenty.  I love coming home to sit in the family room and just enjoy the beauty of her tree.  Every inch of the house gets 'made-over' in the Christmas spirit and it warms my soul.



My Mom's Tree 2010

As a child, I grew up in Southern California, and every year after Thanksgiving had come and gone, we would make our way down to the local tree lot to pick out our Christmas tree.  These days, my mom has traded the fresh tree for an artificial one for a few reasons.  First, the fire hazard and clean-up of a real tree.  Having needles all over the house is something she couldn't really stand, being the perpetually clean person she is.   Second, there is the simplicity an artificial tree brings as there is no need to have to string lights on and off the tree every year since they can remain in place.  This is invaluable time saved, as transforming every room of her beautiful home into a Christmas wonderland takes weeks of dedication to the task, and any time that can be saved in the process is priceless.  Finally, trying to find a fresh, real tree that could house all of her ornaments without buckling under the load would be practically impossible.  My dad always jokes that after she gets finished decorating the tree, the actual tree can no longer be seen.  There is some truth to this, as I believe the ornament to tree ratio is through the roof, but the finished product is spectacular.



Bringing Home the Tree

Now that I am a grown, married woman with a home of my own, I have gone back to my roots and drag my husband out to the tree lot every year in search of the perfect Christmas tree.  Many families in the Pacific Northwest buy a pass to go out into the woods in search of the perfect tree, and while I love the idea of this, there are a handful reasons that I stick to the tree lots.  First, it was the family tradition I had as a child.  Growing up outside of Los Angeles made it just a tad bit difficult to go to the woods to pick out a tree, so to the tree lot we went.  Second, the trees are always gorgeously full and perfectly shaped.  Third, it helps the local economy as Oregon is one of the top Christmas Tree producing states (just another reason why I love Oregon).  My final reason is the most important, and it is that I can't bring myself to go cut down a little tree out in the woods when there are gorgeous trees that are grown on farms for the specific purpose of becoming Christmas trees.  These trees are cut down and brought into the city and sold at the tree lots.  It breaks my heart to see trees that are still sitting in the tree lot the day before Christmas, knowing that they weren't chosen and didn't get to fulfill their purpose.  Why cut down a perfectly good tree in the forest when there are already ones that were cut and will go to waste if not bought at the tree lots?  This may sound extremely silly to some, but trees are living creatures, and I think of them like little animals.  The idea of not being picked makes me think of little homeless animals at the shelter just begging to be taken home and loved.  Support your local tree lots!!!



Our Christmas Lights

I also enjoy covering my home in Christmas decorations.  I may not be as extreme as my mom, but every year my decoration collection grows a little and I get that much closer.  Last year we won the prize for the best Christmas lights/outdoor decorations in our neighborhood, which earned us a $100 gift certificate to the Old Mill Shopping District.  This allowed me to prove to my husband that all the hard work is worth it, to which he responded 'Yeah, this year.'  Scrooge.  He is just like my dad, and I am so like my mother when it comes to Christmas.


A Creative Approach to Christmas Lights
in a neighboring community. 



"Thanks for the delicious bow Auntie
Summer and Uncle Jason!"

This year we had the added joy of celebrating Christmas with a child, my nephew.  Children just add so much excitement to the holidays.  While he was too young to understand anything that was going on (he's only 7 months) we all still had great fun spoiling him and watching him help rip open presents.  It was all a little overwhelming for the little guy, and with all the money spent on him, his favorite item of the day was the red bow that adorned the present that Jason and I gave him.  Naturally.  I can't wait for Christmases in the future when he is a little older and can understand some of what is going on.  I'm also looking forward to starting our own family and the excitement that having a child of our own to spoil will bring.

It is now December 28th, and I sit in the leather recliner in my parents family room, basking in the glow of the Christmas tree as I type.  I am saddened at the realization that Christmas has come and gone, but plan to enjoy the beautiful decorations and lights for as long as possible.  When we return home, I will undoubtedly keep my decorations up as long as possible before finally caving in and putting them away for another year.  I will miss the Christmas music on the radio on my way to work.  This always, well usually always, brightened my morning drive.  I love Christmas music and never really grow tired of it.  I could listen to it all day, much to my co-worker's dismay.  There is just something about it that instantly lifts my spirits and makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.  Lately however, it seems that the radio stations that play Christmas music have really been reaching to add to their repertoire.  So many sad songs of heartbreak and loneliness have made their way onto the radio, and while I feel for the families who have soldiers over seas, how does depressing Christmas music make it better?  I think there should be a ban on the writing of new Christmas music.  I love the music from my youth and the traditional songs.  Bring on 'Frosty the Snowman,' 'Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer,' 'I'll be Home for Christmas,' 'Let It Snow,' 'Walking in a Winter Wonderland,' 'Oh Holy Night,' and so on and so forth.  Bring on Perry Como, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra.  They are the grandfathers of Christmas's melodic soul.  So in future years when you are grumbling about all the Christmas music on the radio, think of all the joy it is bringing me and try not complain so loudly. It is only one month out of the year that I get to enjoy it!!



My adorable nephew and his new pillow pet!

 I hope the holidays were good to everyone, and that you all got to experience a little bit of the magic that this season brings.


My sister, her husband and my nephew
with his pile of presents



HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL,

AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!