We like lazy days...

...yes we do.  :)

Lessons in Wine Tasting

My friend, Rose returned recently from her bout of teaching in the wilds of Alaska. Joking, joking, but really, it is true. She and he husband Lee spent the better part of the last school year in the middle of nowhere Alaska. They have returned to the lower 48 to thaw out for the summer, even though it largely hasn't felt like summer here, yet. 

I hadn't seen Rose yet, so yesterday we decided to whisk away and spend a day doing something neither of us has fully done. We went wine tasting. We didn't know what wineries we wanted to go to, we just got in the car and went. We ended up going to three different wineries and enjoyed our time and the beautiful scenery, and sometimes the wine (neither of us are red wine drinkers and we were in red wine country). It was a growth opportunity...and I tried many wines I wouldn't have otherwise. And, we decided we would fully photo document our adventure...this means lots of pictures...

I loved the rolling hills of Dundee Wine Country.

Us before heading in at stop #1. Erath Winery. Not super impressed.

Bottles purchased at end of #1:   0

Stop #2. Maresh Red Hills Winery. More impressed. Beautiful grounds. More down to earth folks manning the wines.

They had a beautiful back deck with amazing views of those beautiful rolling hills.

Traipsing through the vines. 

The Maresh grounds were spotted with old equipment. Fun to see.

I love the ability I have to push a button and change my camera from color to B & W. Just adds something.

Pu

 Bottles purchased at end of #2:   2 (one by each of us)

This was the funnest shaped/branched tree!

 Amazing views of the valley.

 I could live right here, in this spot, with this view...

 ...or this view...

Stop #3 (our final winery stop): Laurel Ridge. Most impressed. The views weren't as phenomenal since it is in the valley, it was closing, but the gentleman was so gracious in talking to us and the wine was the best (in our opinion) and the was based solely on the fact that they had more whites. Thank goodness we were ending on a good note!

Rose even helped the guy with the thing....the register receipt tape. 

Outside in the sun (on a day when rain had been forecast). And what a glorious day it was.

 Bottles purchased at end of #3:   2 (one by each of us)

Total bottles purchased: 4 and they were all amazing tasters, so I hope I'm still as impressed when we crack into them.

At the end of our fun filled winery tour we stopped for an okay dinner in Newberg...we would have gone elsewhere if we hadn't been so hungry. Then we stopped for ice cream at Burgerville before heading home. Like I said, a glorious day.

Addictions...

These two websites are so addicting, such a time suck and adored by me...

...anybody else?!

Though, I've gotten some great ideas...like the idea for the decorations at work for the Clown Day, oh yeah...those plastic tablecloths that rocked the ceiling decoration and made it look like a big top, that idea came from Pinterest. I've also gotten other great ideas from Pinterest and lots of free crochet patterns from Ravelry. I sometimes think I should spend more time crocheting/crafting than looking at these two sites for ideas. Sometimes a girl just needs some inspiration, though. Right?! RIGHT!

In Cahoots!

I was driving along I-84 the other day and a particular billboard caught my eye....

Apparently, my home state is in cahoots with Portland. The city I love and where I live. The next time I drove that same stretch of freeway I had to take a picture. You see, Wyoming Tourism is doing this huge media-blitz and there have been multiple t.v. commercials and now billboards popping up to advertise the wide open spaces and wild horses that run free in Wyoming. It's funny to see how they depict Wyoming and to compare it to my recollections and experiences there. But, whatever brings the tourist to that romanticized version of reality, right. Although the commercials aren't particularly my favorite, I do appreciate the billboard comparisons....as seen below.

"SALMON STREET FOUNTAIN, MEET OLD FAITHFUL" (pardon the MAX lines and light poles, etc)

 And, this is Salmon Street Fountain, just for your comparison...

A few days after seeing the Old Faithful billboard, I saw this one on I-205...

"US BANCORP TOWER, MEET DEVILS TOWER"

 And, here is the US Bancorp Tower, for your comparison. This tower houses Portland City Grille. 30 floors up and amazing views....

So, are these messages that I need to visit my home state?! Maybe, just maybe.

"Even the sidewalks bloom!" ~Dad

One spring when my Dad was here he was so impressed by the colors of and the amount of flowers here. When he returned home he would tell his friends (and still does say this) that even the sidewalks bloom in Portland in the spring because of all the rain. I can't help but think of him when spring flowers are in bloom here. And, I most definitely couldn't help but to think about him when I saw this Rhododendron in bloom on my way home from work the other day. I had to stop and take a picture. You can barely see any of the green vegetation, but it is prolifically pink. It isn't just a bush either, I'd classify it as a tree...smaller than some, but taller than I am.

This is also one of many examples of why I love living here. It's beautiful!!

Sunday Drives, Alpacas and Potato Salad

I'm thankful for the friends I have in my life and for the beautiful places that surround me. Today I rode with my friend, Linda and her husband and daughter to Hood River, OR to drive parts of the "Fruit Loop," which I love. They were hopeful that all the orchard trees would still be in bloom, but we were a week late. It was still a wonderful trip. The sun was out and it was gorgeous.

We, of course, had to stop at one of my favorite "parks" turned to one of their favorite parks at my recommendation. Panorama Point Park...it blesses its visitors with this view of Mt Hood!

 And, of the Hood River valley.

 We made multiple stops, but I neglected to take multiple pictures. Though, when we stopped at the Cascade Alpacas 'farm' and their accompanying business Foothills Yarn and Fiber I did take a few picture. There is some yarn that I wish I would have bought in the shop...I will go back and get it...someday.

 Alpacas and their "watch dog," who is huge and adorable.

 Aren't they just the cutest things you ever did see?!

After the ride we stopped in Hood River for a late lunch and I had the most amazing Blue Cheese, Bacon Potato Salad at the restaurant we were at. My mouth still waters when I think about it. It was a glorious day! Thanks for the invite Linda, Larry and Connie!

On Being a Clown

One of our 95 year old participants has always wanted to go to "Clown School" and was never allowed too. So, at 95 she took to private lessons on clowning from one of the entertainers who isn't normally a clown at work and had a "graduation ceremony" where she had to complete a few tasks before officially being deemed a clown. We went all out at work and decorated the day center to put us all in the mood. 

I had seen the following idea on Pinterest and adored it. Such a great idea. It is just plastic tableclothes that have been bunched, and swagged out for a sort of streamer decoration, but even better. It gave the room a very "big top" tent feeling.

 Kelli tackled the staging area with these 50, yes 50 balloons.

 Another big top shot.

 We had a preschool group that came to be part of the audience and they had a fan club seating section! They were adorable!

 I even got decked out as a clown, as did many of our staff, in support of the participant.

 On my way home from the work day, I stopped to see my buddy Myles in my clown get-up and even came with a balloon. Trust me...it took that balloon to get him to come to me since looked a wee bit different and he wasn't so sure he wanted to have anything to do with me. Eventually we got close enough for this cute picture!

Everyone should do a bit of clowning around every now and then!

Dogwood time

I LOVE Dogwood Trees. I will have a Dogwood Tree in my yard some day.

It will be pink. In the meantime, these lovely white ones in my parking lot will do.

Aren't they absolutely gorgeous?! Too bad the blossoms don't last longer.

Trust the Tides

A secret that I have to share with you. It's not the kind of secret that I wouldn't share. It's the kind of secret that I just haven't shared and here it is. I start blogs all the time. Read: I title blogs all the time. I don't even technically start them. When I click on "Edit Posts" when logged into Blogger a plethora of titles come up...most of them with the word draft right next to them. You see, I often stumble upon phrases, words, quotes, etc that I adore. Things that I can envision writing to. They always say that you write something and then title it. They being whomever the authority on writing is. I, on the other hand like to title and then write. In hindsight maybe that is why I was challenged when writing my undergrad thesis. Maybe I title things and try to write to that title. Sometimes I need that direction. Maybe that is how I live my life. I live my life to its title. But, what is the title? Could I title my life? What would you title your life?!

Anyway, I digress. The reason I just told you that secret that really is a non-secret is because I titled this blog 9/14/11 and 5:43 pm to be exact. And, I am just now writing it. I love to write, but I haven't been loving to write in the past several months. Keeping my blog "updated" (hahaha) has been a struggle. I have included pictures, a few musings, random thoughts, but nothing weighty, nothing with depth. I can't say that this will contain much more than a few musing, but I finally feel like writing, like processing. And, as Yiruma plays on the stereo and as the cat snores at my feet and as I feel utterly and completely exhausted and raw, I will write.

My Facebook post from earlier tonight reads:

"Life is filled with loss and it seems to be particularly concentrated in my life and in the lives of those I care about right now...as difficult as it can to this is good to remember...

"Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That's its balance."

~Osho, Everyday Osho: 365 Daily Meditations for the Here and Now."

That is only one of the many quotes that I could have posted, wanted to post. I will include some others here also.

“Less is less. Heartbreak is heartbreak. You think I'm sitting here gloating. Telling myself that my suffering beats yours? Hurt is hurt. You don't measure these things.”
~Stephanie Kallos

It seems life right now is fraught with loss. There are always losses, daily, but it seems like heavy loss and loss after loss are banking right now. As I was talking to a friend earlier tonight I realized that loss has been heavier for me lately and it stems back several months. After struggling at work for a long time I made the very difficult decision to leave the site that I had been working at for over 6 years and I transferred to another site. It was new and fresh but still familiar enough and the transfer rocked my world...literally. I thought I had lost my mind. I don't know if I have ever questioned my sanity so much. I cried more than I didn't and had to keep reminding myself of the reasons I left. I had to remind myself that I was slowly suffocating in the environment I was in. The trick was that a person forgets about the bad things when they aren't in the middle of them...ask any woman who has gone through childbirth...I've had friends tell me that once you are past the excruciating pain you forget about it until you are in the middle of it again.

I was amazed at how completely and utterly alone I felt. I hadn't expected some of the emotions that seemingly blindsided me and I'm still in awe of them today. Now, I have adjusted, but still not completely. I still feel like I don't fully belong anywhere. I'm still new and not completely "broken in" at the new site, but I no longer belong at the old one. In fact, it was made pretty clear by a few people that I wasn't really welcome there, much to the chagrin of myself and many others. I associate with quotes. I don't know why...maybe it stems from the book of quotes my Mom kept that I remember sifting through and wondering what was happening in her life to make her hone in on a particular phrase or passage at a particular time. These were two of the quotes I identified with during the toughest of times during my work transition... “I was lonely. I felt it deeply and permanently, that this state of being on my own might never disappear. But I welcomed the lonliness, which had everything to do with being anonymous. It's never lonliness that nibbles away at a person's insides, but not having room inside themselves to be comfortably alone.” ~Rachel Sontag & “I couldn’t be with people and I didn’t want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective whooshed and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of people, all slotted into their lives; then I could see me—I’d lost my place in the universe. It had closed up and there was nowhere for me to be. I was more lost than I had known it was possible for any human being to be.” ~Marian Keyes

Just barely a month into my time at my new site my new and wholeheartedly supportive and amazing new supervisor told me she was leaving. Wham...just as my sea legs were becoming more stable and starting to feel the promise of solid ground away goes one of the main reasons I transferred to the new site and with that away goes any ground I had made in becoming stabilized. Normally this wouldn't have shaken me as it did, but as I stated earlier I thought I might be loosing my mind. I can't explain exactly how I felt, but treading water and not winning in doing that is the closest I can describe. Now I would be adjusting to a new boss with little support of co-workers who knew me so little. And my poor parents and close friends who thought that they'd heard the last of my struggles with this situation once I left the negative site....oh they were ready for me to move on. Though none of them shared this with me.

Now, as I am adjusting to the new supervisor and upheaval of other sorts we have a dear co-worker who I didn't get to know well enough who died sort of unexpectedly. This has sent my new team, me included into the throws of despair. The struggle to come to terms with a life cut too short, all the while addressing and ministering to lives that are in their last pages and doing this successfully can be a challenge. Being fully there can be a challenge and then supporting those participants in their own struggle with the loss of this wonderful life. I can't help but take pause to remember all the losses and struggles and challenges of life. Of all of our lives. Loss of loved ones, experiences, independence, love...“Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads—at least that’s where I imagine it—there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.” ~Haruki Murakami

I'd like to think that this quote is true..."Grief does not change you; it reveals you." ~John Green and that we all have the strength to move on. And even though we all do I believe it is in varying quantities. I know that with time loss won't go away, but the pain and hurt caused by that loss will become familiar to us, not such an unusual, uncomfortable feeling and in time we will experience more loss and more loss “and it is hard to let go, to imagine alternatives, but you are bold with unknowing, you are ready to explore.” ~Terra Elan McVoy And I wish for us, all of us that we are able to explore, move past the losses, in whatever form they are in. People, experiences, memories, traditions. We need to remember that "It's difficult to ever go back to the same places or people. You turn away, even for a moment, and when you turn back around, everything's changed." ~Gabrielle Zevin

Life is constantly moving forward, no matter how much we want to look back. We make decisions, others make decisions. Life ends and life begins. It amazes me that so much is concentrated in what surrounds me right now, deaths of relatives for friends and deaths of friends of relative, promises of new life that don't come to fruition, loss of independence and at the same time there is new life, there are new beginnings there are new things to look forward to. “For some moments in life there are no words.” – David Seltzer Sometimes it seems like there are no words, other times, like now I feel overflowing with them. In close I would like to share what the grief counselor at work shared with some of us today...lyrics from the song Anthem by Leonard Cohen, "Ring the bells that still can ring; Forget your perfect offering; There is a crack, a crack in everything; That's how the light gets in."

And to bring it back to the title...because I didn't really write to the title like I anticipated...I have told friends that I need to trust the tides, that the sorrow over things lost in my life, most majorly the loss of my daily interactions and feeling of belonging to a place and to a people that has changed and morphed...my sadness comes in waves, some days better than others, some days when the tears are full to almost overflowing. I feel that way a lot right now and then stack loss on top of loss and we feel like were in high tide all the time, but I know, as with the ocean that I love and am drawn too...the tides will recede....the waves that come in will settle and go out and I'll be standing on more solid ground once again, if only I trust the tides.

Blessings to you and love to you with any challenge you may be experiencing with loss right now and ever.

Tiptoeing Through the Tulips

There is one part of my job that I particularly enjoy (there are many, but this one is unique and special) is taking my participants on outings. Every spring I've taken several to one of the area tulip fields. This year the group sang "Tiptoeing Through the Tulips" part of the way up to the fields. It was a cloudy, but warm day and we had a great time. 

 Pretty flowers!!

 Ignore the cheesy pose...it was requested.

~ ~

Backyard Rain Forest Memories

I awoke at 5:15 this morning. On the dot. And, in my opinion, entirely too early. Alas, sleep for the precious hour and a half remaining before my alarm is supposed to abruptly welcome me to this day is, eluding me. This morning I don't mind. This afternoon I probably will mind. Right now though, I am embracing this moment because at this moment I am being serenaded by the most wonderful, beautiful and precious morning choir of the multitudes of birds that are gracing me with their birdsong. I am in awe. I can hear them through closed windows, in the otherwise silent walls of my home in these wee hours. It is AMAZING and is such a wonderful reminder of the beauty and simplicity in this world. This is a good way to start the day, before the rushes of noise, the sometimes overwhelming hub-bub of a day filled to the brim with happenings. Before sensory overload, in the not-natural sort of way. This is sensory joy.

A little earlier I donned my slippers and opened my sliding glass door to more fully take in this amazing spring morning, one finally warm enough that I could stand on my balcony for a time and over the faint hum of the nearby freeway traffic I could hone in on the birdsong. I wish I could record it because every morning the song is different.

As I was standing on my balcony in the slowly lightening day surrounded by glorious nature made music I couldn't help but reflect on one of my earliest memories. It probably isn't really the earliest, I just make it that way in my mind because it was so stunning that it would have to be one of my first just by sheer magnificence of it. I can't remember the time of year or how old I was or most of the details. What I do remember is waking up in what seemed like the middle of the night and my mom was up and probably grading papers or reading the newspaper--early morning rituals she had, very unlike my own now, but maybe more in line with how they will be if ever I have children. She welcomed me to sit, but also recommended I return to bed so that I could get rest. I've concluded that most likely this was not in fact the middle of the night, but it had to be the early morning pre-dawn hours. The dog was outside and I heard him bark at the door to be let so I went to let him in. I opened the back door to what I can only recall from my memory as truly believing that what lay outside of the walls of our home was not the outdoors I knew from daylight, but a transformed world. To me it sounded like the dull daylight world that I knew was a tropical rain forest. I couldn't explain it any other way. I based this conclusion completely off of the sounds I heard for it was still a dark and otherwise visually mysterious world. It sounded like nature amplified, like the birds were 10 times the size I knew them to be, like they had booming voices and sounded nothing like the little bit of chatter I was familiar with. Like they were from another world, or at least another part of the world. Their morning song was also accompanied by the chirp of crickets.

I remember standing there in the doorway in awe, much I as stood on my balcony this morning. The only difference was that I was younger then, I knew no better than to think that the world changed outside my house every night after I went to bed and miraculously changed back before I got up, unless of course I was sneaky and beat it to disappearing for the day and could hear some of this beautiful and to me unexplainable happenings. Today I know different. Today I know that the world I am familiar with during daylight is the one that changes, that brings the noise, the sometimes overwhelmed feeling, the moving to fast to slow down and enjoy the simplicity of this world around us. Today I also know that it is my heart that is in as much awe of this wonderful sound and it is my ears, and for this, I am thankful. For one of my earliest memories, which I always think of as my backyard rain forest memory, I am thankful. And, as the birdsong quiets for the day and the hum of freeway traffic becomes more than just a hum and as my alarm is just about ready to go off, I am thankful for the peace of the morning and have high hopes that the calmness I feel accompanies me through the day.

Much love and many blessings to you in this day.