It's like this...

Back in the dark ages of 8 track tapes and am/fm radios in our 1969 Thunderbird, I was treated to songs my parents enjoyed. When I was little, it was fine. I hadn't yet developed my own musical tastes. As I progressed into the turbulent teens and discovered what I liked and what I didn't, I chafed at being stuck in a car for a long ride listening to The Mills Brothers or Charlie Pride or The Statler Brothers. I spent hours traveling to California or just across the mountains to Chelan with the 8 track blasting through the speakers. I knew where every break in every song was on every tape as the tapes turned over. I complained. I was a teenager, of course I complained. But I also sang along and learned all the words. I still know all the words. It comes in handy knowing all the words because each night our home phone rings and it's my older sister Cheri. She asks me each night, in her own way, to sing those songs to her. And I do. What she likes best is to hear The S...

I love them. Yesterday was a kind of impromptu girls outing. It wouldn't have happened if not for this... In Children's ER til 3 in the morning. Ash was having severe chest pain. The medics said she needed to go to the hospital. With her FVL (coagulation disorder) a severe pain in the head, chest or legs is always cause for concern. They found no evidence of blood clots on the CT scan and her EKG was normal but they said she had inflammation around her sternum and rib cage. This was more than likely caused by her bad fall at the ice arena on Saturday. Her Grandpa Doug is a massage therapist, so he offered to work on her yesterday afternoon. That involved taking the ferry over to Kingston and we can't go there without a stop at the beach cabin. We stopped there first, then went to Doug's house up in the woods. Here's Steph and Ash on Grandpa's deck. After she was worked on, we went back to the cabin. It was calm and beautiful there. The sky was amazing. I ...

I got a call on Thursday....or was it Friday? Anyway, it was last week and it was HR offering me the position I'd interviewed for on Tuesday. Of course I accepted it. And then I did the obligatory happy dance. I was wearing more clothes of course. My new position is something I always wanted to do, but never knew I always wanted to do. That's deep, I know. I'll let you think about it for a moment. May seems to be Medical Month for me. Apparently my warranty has expired and it's time to do an overhaul/check on all my systems. My visit to the cardiologist and subsequent stress test on a treadmill showed that I've a very healthy heart and arteries. They only squicky thing I carried away from that was a massive bruise from the IV spot. Today I had a colonoscopy, again with completely favorable result. The squicky thing about this was the prep. If you've ever had to prep for one of these babies, then you know what I'm talking about. My parting gift from ...

Raising children is hard. Very hard. They don't tell you that when you're pregnant. They don't tell you a lot of things when you're pregnant, like your body will never be the same, you will be a walking zombie for years to come due to massive sleep deprivation. You will probably break your ankle by walking on toys in the middle of the night, you will clean up more vomit than you ever dreamed was possible, and you will accept soggy cheerios from chubby, grimy little fingers and cherish them as being better than gold. Your refrigerator door will hold art that means more to you than a Rembrandt. Finger food will give way to real food and wars over broccoli and asparagus and whole wheat goodness. Once your children are old enough, friends who have been parents longer than you have will tell you how much to dread what's coming and you look at your sweet angels and can't ever imagine that such a dark, hormonal cloud will erupt within them. But it does. You go from ...

The second time seeing the amazing Los Pinguos was just as good as I thought it would be. We went to Aberdeen to see them. Steph, Sam (her boyfriend), Alli and Ash came with Lance and I. Due to my photophobia, (is that a word?) I was the one who snapped a couple of pics of Lance, Steph and Sam with the band. They are from Argentina and besides being gorgeous, their music is addicting. We stayed after the concert for pictures and got to talk to them for a bit. I also met a woman there who is from Venezuela. Her accent made me so homesick for Venezuela! The rest of the weekend was spent in Ocean Shores . My father, brother and 2 nephews were staying there in the Ocean Shores State Park, and we stayed in our hotel. Hey, I like camping just as much as the next girl---I do! Ok, that was hard to type with a straight face. I DO like camping, just not in tents. I prefer hotels, with their hot water, indoor plumbing and nice beds. But I digress... It just so happened that our stay t...