an unfolding story of our journey

SILLY

2011-08-04T20:00:00.001-07:00

Eva is old enough to know that this is funny and laugh with me about it. How fun! (Read: dreary day activity success!)

summer with clouds

2011-08-02T07:52:00.001-07:00

Donovan is heading out to San Diego this week for DevCon, the yearly conference for developers (of the product Filemaker, it's not defcon the hacking conference!). I'm nervous and excited for my first week alone with Eva. Unfortunately she woke up with a runny nose but in comparison to the stomach flu that we had for a couple weeks in July this seems like cake. So wish us luck! We'll be doing bachelorette things all week like eating ice cream for breakfast, watching Sleepless in Seattle, and staying up late (probably none of those things actually, but it's nice to dream).

For our family and friends in the northwest and afar, I'm sure you would love to see how different Eva is now that she is 14 months! Just within the last two months she has learned so many new things about the world. She really loves ambulances and says "wheeew" when they go by. We visited San Francisco yesterday and she really enjoyed the hustle and bustle, especially going up and down the escalator, although we had to move along after 4 times because I started to worry the security guard might ask us to stop. She LOVES dogs and yesterday attempted to ride Hunter, the 8 year old chocolate labrador that lives next door. Also, Eva has shown a lot of interest in mimicking behavior, especially bathroom activities like pretending to curl her hair, tweeze her eyebrows, and put on a shirt (none of which she actually does successfully, of course).

I started a running club in Oakland and have enjoyed meeting new women, getting out regularly and just feeling healthy in general. The late evenings in Oakland are so beautiful, warm, and sunny, it's such a great way to end a day! I'm hoping by next summer I will be ready to run my first marathon. I've enjoyed getting a nice little tan too, which is a great side effect. Donovan has also started going to Toastmaster's regularly as a way to get some self care and recently spoke about himself to the group in his first talk.

Donovan and I celebrated five years together last week. We enjoyed an evening out alone to dinner, the beach, and a used bookstore/vintage place while we perused without Eva distracting us. It was so fun! I'm really glad we got married and I really love him more every day. I truly think I'm such a better human being than I would be without him.

August will be a month of "vacation time" for our family (although some of it is others vacationing here in Oakland). We are hosting my middle sis and her husband for a week and hosting my mom for another week of August. Also, we'll be making a week long trip in August, too. And after we have our month of fun in August, my aunts and cousins will be coming to Sacramento for a weekend in September. I'm looking forward to it all! Let's hope Eva's sleep schedule remains normal and traveling goes smoothly. In the past Eva has woken up at 5am every day of our vacation, which made for really tired parents and baby.

In other news, another stay at home mom and I have started a "swap" where we watch both kids one day a week. That means that twice a month I will get a half day without Eva! We started by me watching the girls last week and it was really sweet to see them together. They toddled around without any talking and reminded me of two little penguins, so cute! When I opened the fridge they both came running (which is really just a fast walk at this point) and were doe eyed, hopeful that they could get something! I just love how babies roll on top of each other, have such a different sense of space and no sense of ownership, and bump into each other when their walking ... it's like watching two comedians.

Well, it's nice to talk about new changes in our family and the joys of summer because right now it looks like winter outside. The weather outside is frightful but inside we feel so *summer-y.* What are you up to this summer? Is the weather looking like summer where you are?

sleeping

2011-05-26T09:46:00.001-07:00

Eva sleeps a LOT. Most parents say, "what a wonderful problem!" But I'm starting to hope that her sleeping/napping hours lessen soon. I miss being out in the sunshine and having longer stretches in the afternoons to be doing... well... anything. This is especially different because now she gets cranky and needs a nap but can't nap in the stroller (although sometimes I take her out during a nap anyway).

There are only so many quiet activities I can do in my house. Let me give you a ballpark... about 13 hours of sleep a night and at times as much as 3.5 hours of sleeping during the day. Wow! Surprisingly, I can still find ways to procrastinate the hard stuff like learning about my sewing machine, sending important emails, and getting my intern paperwork done. :)

Guess who just woke up? Her ears must have been burning!

cheating

2011-05-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

I would like to sheepishly admit that I expanded my six items to ten. Funny that dressing up for Eva's baptism didn't end up being the thing that made me cheat. It was just a normal day. I was longing to wear a racerback tank top. How weird is that? Also, it's been rainy and some of my choices didn't foresee this awful May weather, which is turning out to be much more like winter than spring or summer in these parts.

In other news, my mother celebrated her birthday, our friends just got married, my childhood friend is turning 27, Mother's Day was lovely, and my colleague from Fuller is earning his very distinguished Psy D within a few weeks. My heart is full of pride for his hard work and love for my family during this time of celebration.

In the downtime I'm trying to not go completely crazy since Eva has been sleeping between 15-17 hours a day lately. Yes, this is really high for kids her age. They are expected to sleep around 12-13 hours around age 1. I try to be grateful for it. But being a stay at home mom can be repetitious. I'm looking forward to working part time again. I'm also hoping to do more running, sewing, and have another weekly ritual to see friends (starting this summer when our community group is on hiatus). Anyone else having a hard time being motivated this week? What do you do to get inspired?

crazy

2011-05-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

I'm going crazy. Too few clothes and combination. I window shopped last night and I think it made me even crazier. A part of the challenge is not buying anything for yourself during the challenge.

The good news is, I've only done laundry twice in a week and hope to keep at that pace. It's actually not as much laundry as usual if you can believe it. Laundry is one of those things that multiplies with people and it makes me think that only having one child sounds like a good idea :)

update

2011-05-02T22:30:00.000-07:00

Day 2: Rocking the pencil skirt, tank, and cardi. No sweat.

Day 3: Walking a baby in my red dress and feeling a bit over dressed but happy. Plus, Part 2, purple tee with skirt due to dress getting dirty from the baby and a nighttime counseling appointment.

So far I've done laundry once, spent $8 in quarters (coin machines), and already worked through all of my items. I think one tip for not going crazy is planning the next outfit a day ahead of time. Check out the official site if you haven't already:

sixitemsorless.com

I didn't just think this crazy thing up on my own, I promise!

six items or less

2011-04-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

I read about an interesting project called Six Items or Less. I decided to do the challenge.

1. Pick 6 items of clothing to wear for 30 days (not including underwear, shoes, outerwear, or accessories). So my challenge will end May 30 2011.

2. Don't buy anything during the month.

3. Get creative, accessorize, mix and match.

It is an open ended experiment that hopes you will find some insight from the experiment although it doesn't push a certain agenda. I'm excited to do this and learn. I think I've convinced Donovan to join too.

Here's what I chose:

1. Purple v-neck tee
2. dark jeans
3. red dress
4. pencil skirt
5. stripe tank top
6. cardigan

After my first day of being on the project I think having a messy baby may be my biggest challenge in the next month. I'm going to be washing my clothes all the time! Other thoughts: last night I was a bit panicked. This morning although it was a bit unexciting to already know what I would be wearing it was also freeing and time saving to have few choices.

Here is a picture of me on Day 1

(I'm happy, I promise.)

Would you consider the challenge? Why or why not?

lent

2011-03-10T10:51:00.000-08:00

We're taking some time for reflection and peace in our house this Lent season. No computers after 6:30pm. I love it! So far in our first day we have already done so much bonding! We had a really great dinner, talked over tea, watched an old film, and went through our pile of bills that had been long ignored.

Donovan made a note of how the space we have created is allowing us to look at what we had formally been putting off. It's funny how we used to say we "didn't have time" to do the bills. Sure we do! We just can't watch Hulu all night long, but that's something that's really not life giving (that's a term one of my friend's coined, I love it!).

What are you doing this Lent season?

fish girl

2011-03-08T08:47:00.000-08:00

Still no walking yet, but Eva is sure a lively girl! She has a new habit of wiggling like a fish. It's so funny. Whoever picks her up grabs her around the torso only to realise that she's moving from top to bottom with all her wiggly might! What a character.

walking?

2011-02-16T13:41:00.001-08:00

Eva just passed the 8.5 month marker yesterday. She isn't walking yet but is so close. I started walking at 8.5 months so I was worried that she might walk just as soon. Turns out she's still not, but it might only be a small difference depending on soon she walks.

A friend commented that she looks just like a mini adult all sized down proportionally. I think it's true. And this plus a very active baby makes for a baby that looks older than she is. People are surprised to hear that my baby who refuses to be in a stroller or carrier now (way to curious and big for that!) is only 8 months.

I fear that this means she won't want cuddles. It's hard to say though if she is just curious because she is at this developmental marker now or if her personality tends away from snuggling and such. I'm hoping that it's the former not the latter.

It's been rainy here. We took the car in this week and so Eva and I did a lot of walking due to no other option. We met some nice people at Whole Foods cafe and most of the people there are patient to understand a mom that needs to get out of the house with a curious and active baby. Thank goodness for understanding and even sweet and interested strangers! On our rainy day walks it made me think about Portlanders and accepting getting rained on a bit. I think some people in our neighborhood thought I was a little crazy for being out in the rain with my baby, but really, the baby was the least concerned with the rain (I think we get a little worked up as adults about this sometimes, unnecessarily so). Who needs a plastic stroller cover anyway? :) (Not that Eva would actually be in a stroller!)

We are officially over being sick. Thank goodness. What a long road that was. Now we are due for more immunizations. Oh no. They always come with a few days of being sick. I just can't bear to do that right now after the last two weeks. So I've gotten to attend our normal weekly functions and see friends which has been a great light in my life. I was seriously getting cabin fever!

The blossoms are pink and white and started turning around the end of the first week of February. I love the signs of spring coming. My father always loved this time of year so much. The two year anniversary of his death is Feb 28, 2011 and it's been a funky month as I am entering a new season of grief.

sickies

2011-02-02T12:17:00.001-08:00

Anyone got any great ideas for taking care of sick babies and making them better? I've heard of some different theories about high temperatures. What do you do? Bundle them up or try to "get the heat out" (stripping them down, cool baths, etc). Eva also has a nasty head cold, is mouth breathing, and subsequently is not sleeping well.

Here I will throw up my prayer to God for today...

"Make me patient and kind, God. Make me gentle. Make me soft and huggable. Show me how to help Eva even when she can't say what she needs. Give me understanding when she is fussy and needy. Help me to see her needs in a sweet sense rather than looking at her resentfully. Give me strength to be a big strong rock of a mother. My strength comes from you. Give us rest tonight. And peace. Provide us with shared smiles and sweet glances in the midst of this hard week. Heal our bodies by your mighty power, Jesus. Come and touch us. And please Lord, keep us close to you. Amen."

crazy little girl

2011-01-25T20:14:00.001-08:00

Eva loves...

crawling
pulling up to standing
waving at people (and by waving I mean opening her mouth really wide, saying hi with her eyes, or flapping her arms like wings... because she doesn't know how to "adult wave" yet)
letting you know she's tired of being held and sometimes she does this by clenching her little legs together so you can't wrap her around you or arching her back!
back arching in general, for any and all occasions, and to generally communicate frustration
sleeping
eating oatmeal, rice cereal, veggies, bananas, and especially Graduates (an infant type of Cheerio)

She is absolutely in love with little girls. She loves watching them do anything. Yesterday she admired a little three year old from our church as she played a lap harp and talked. Today she watched as a little toddler peeled an orange. And by watching I mean some intent staring as well as some crazy chasing as fast as she could crawl, climb and go in her direction.

She also loves doting adults and really doesn't have any preference over who it is (stranger, friend, man, woman, child, etc) although hats, glasses, and facial hair score big points. I was a bit afraid at all this apparent extroversion until a friend of mine simply stated "she just loves people, like you and Donovan!" I feel much calmer about it all now. Somehow that made it seem so fitting for our family and so beautiful. Sometimes I get nervous and think, she will be so extroverted she'll make me crazy! But that's not necessarily true.

Right now if Eva could instantly become an adult in the working world, I have a few ideas of how her raw talent could be optimized. (I can't believe I'm doing that which I said I would never do, but this is partially for the sake of comedy.) Eva could be a...
-missionary. She is a magnet to others and really loves them without restraint. She ministers to others and makes them feel closer to God. She radiates beauty and is unashamed. She just wants to make others happy.
-computer technician. Seriously. Today I found her in a nest of computer cords with a huge smile on her face and I could almost imagine her pulling out plugs and reorganizing them and saying gibberish that I couldn't understand like "Stanley, pass me the B35 ninety X, I have a real problem over here and it's going to take me all afternoon!"
-artist. She loves looking at the sky and just stopping and staring. Sometimes she finds the most simple thing (like a tagged speed limit sign) and locks onto it with her eyes, even following it as we pass by. It's beyond me what she sees in something so simple! But I can imagine great things coming from her. She helps me see the world anew and I think that's what artists can do too.
-animal rescuer. Eva loves animals as much as she loves people. She tries to interact with cats and dogs and attempts talking to them in the same way she communicates with humans, she doesn't judge them to be any different!

On a serious note, most of the time I'm trying to hold onto every precious moment. I love being with her and raising her. But one bad thing did happen this week! As I sat a mere 1 foot away while Eva was bathing in the adult bathtub, Eva put my razor in her mouth! You can imagine my shock and surprise to look over to see her with the handle of my razor sticking out of her mouth. There was a cut and some blood and a restless night but I think all is well now. The only other hiccups we've had lately with this developmental stage is 1. learning to get down (from standing or sitting) gracefully, which is much harder to do when tired and 2. eating things (leaves are our biggest problem).

She keeps me on my toes! Did I ever say I'm glad I'm 26? Whew. I am!

just because

2011-01-14T18:20:00.000-08:00

I love seeing Eva's determination. Today she stood on her toes to reach for something but it wasn't just her toes it was the tops of her toes. Her whole body reached for the object (I'm still not quite sure what exactly she had in mind at the time because there were a few things within her line of vision). I look at her sometimes and think, "if only I had that much zest for life!" Children make you new again, they help you realize how fun simple things like water can be, and they help you enjoy simple things (like breathing fresh air) as you live life along with them. Just today I found myself sighing and screaming along with Eva as we breathed our lungs full of cool fresh afternoon air. Of course, children also make you tired beyond all belief. So there is this strange dichotomy of complete exhaustion, sweet slowness, exhilaration, and a desperate cry to go to sleep. I'm hoping this long weekend finds you slowing down, breathing in fresh air, and kissing the cheeks of your loved ones just because.

watching a person unfold into humanity

2011-01-06T21:40:00.001-08:00

Eva is working on grabbing toys while she is propping herself up (in a standing position) on furniture. I can see the wheels turning. She wants to grab the object. She also wants to stand and hold onto the furniture. But she can't stay standing without holding onto the furniture. She's tried and figured it out. It hurt to learn that lesson! After she fell that first time she went about furniture-standing much more cautiously. And to get down there were two options 1) wait until her legs almost buckled and then cry for help, while shaking from head to toe meanwhile (looking very helpless and often getting the hoped-for assistance) or 2) slowly tipping like a falling tree, allowing her big baby belly brushing the couch to slow the force of gravity. I watch these things and wonder with her. How she figures them out. How she decides to explore further. How she trusts again and risks again. The world is a scary place! But she is a brave soul. I think all babies are. To work within a world where things hurt and are not always working out as you would like them to. To work at things that time after time don't succeed. I wonder at how she is motivated to try things like walking that she has never accomplished before. How does her body and her brain motivate her to try for the first time? And second and third time (after those attempts didn't work), before there is any reason for her to think that she will eventually get it? Eva puts her whole body into moving. She can scoot and just this last two or three weeks can do a proper knee and hand "crawl." If she sees a computer cord or a piece of paper she is on a 100-meter sprint speed toward it, nothing will stop her. Yet, to my great delight and humor, if I pick her up and play a different game with her the memory of the cord is removed from her entirely and she is enveloped in the new activity. I will delight in this for as long as it lasts. It seems if we could delay this lack of short term memory until about age 4, many toddlers would be easier to manage :) So Eva is moving through this world, one small task at a time. And I am watching. I love just seeing it, experiencing it though her eyes. It really does make me feel like the whole world is new again. Small banana pieces are new again. I cut some up for her today and reveled at how she watched them, grasped for them, and in spite of them slipping away from her rigid little fingers, she continued on this journey at trying to get them. Although when she did I was surprised to find that the goal was not to get them in her mouth and I'm not quite sure what the real goal was. Perhaps just to chase them. Ahhh, raising babies makes me feel young and carefree and wild. I love having a little learner in my house. It is so strange and lovely!

a snapshot of a growing wonder

2010-12-10T13:16:00.000-08:00

A good friend and I exchanged emails recently and I wanted to share some of my correspondence so you can see a glimpse of all the wonderful new things Eva is doing this week. Could you imagine an adult doing this much changing and growing in just a few days? Babies are really remarkable!

Eva: wow, what a growing, changing, human being. How do I even begin? She is just changing every moment. I am SO glad I get to see it all happen; I can't imagine not being at home full time to see it all unfold! She is starting solid foods and really likes the food of the week: pears. Food falls out of her mouth and sometimes she doesn't use her tongue right and the whole mouthful of food goes out instead of in :) She is getting up on her hands and toes and really getting around. Eva can't get her knees up yet though so it's more scooting than crawling. She loves finding computer cords and chomping on them whenever we have our heads turned. She loves slapping things with her hand, like her own thigh and the tile flooring. Also, she has a knack for finding "wet" sound areas and talking and hearing her own echo. She loves pushing her feet up against the person holding her and she cranes her neck around to see everything. She is so curious! It makes breastfeeding in public difficult at times. Oh, I love seeing how mellow she gets on a full belly. She had bad acid reflux as a baby and I think it's subsided. So just starting recently she will let me hold her flat on her back (like a traditional baby cradle hold) and after a good meal she will relax and gaze at me. It's unbelieveable, Lou. It really is.

Gotta go, she's talking and waking up from her nap. The other day she was making her first escape attempt, eek!

....and later...

Oh, there is so much more Eva is starting to do... I just have to share:

Eva runs into her own image when she is crawling towards the mirror. I often wonder if she thinks that it's her or if she thinks it's another baby. She also crawls right into furniture so we moved our coffee table out of the living room.

She's not sitting up yet but she is SO close.

She laughs when we give her kisses now and understands tickling (last month she just kinda sat there).

She loves to see her dad at the end of the day. When she's left alone with him she doesn't act up or miss me, she's really secure when he's there.

She can spot something from about 5-10 feet away and scoot to that spot in about 30 seconds!

Her belly is the softest and sweetest thing I've ever felt. Same goes for her tongue. I'm in such awe that it is so pink and perfect.

Her grasp is getting better but at times it takes her a few attempts (and a scoot closer often) to actually grab something... she's working on depth perception. She has been spotting food on the kitchen floor lately too, just specks, and will try to grab them. It's so funny! Her hand moves the speck of dirt and then she looks where it used to be (*confused look*) before she finally finds it again.

Today I saw her on her hands and toes with her butt in the air and she grabbed for a toy (balancing on three limbs!) and put it in her mouth. It was great!

I think she really likes the feeling of a q-tip in her ear and is really still and patient when I'm cleaning them. If only diaper changing was so interesting and fun!

She doesn't mind the rain at all. We go out in it and she tries to lap it up like a puppy :) !

...Well, off to more adventures with the little one!

teething

2010-11-10T12:49:00.000-08:00

Teething is a journey. There are bad days and good days. This morning there were crazy bursts of tears and moments of sweet carefree laughter. Teething pain sneaks up on us and steals us of naps and of the small order we have in our house. You won't get to hear more about teething or other things because... Eva's crying again because of teething. Ironic?

voting

2010-11-02T14:18:00.000-07:00

It's Election Day and Eva got to go to the polls with me. We had a cuteness factor of over 100% because our neighbor brought his 8 week old black lab too. I bumped into the woman who lives in the apartment below us, Pat, and cast my vote! That makes it sound simple, but here in CA it means casting tens of votes with all these measures they have. I did some last minute researching this morning during Eva's nap. So to my American friends, don't forget to vote!

hotness

2010-09-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

Being hot is like my winter. I want to stay inside and hide from the heat. Yesterday and today Eva and I have spent our first days inside all day since... the hospital (and maybe the few days after that too). It's meant being more creative with our time since we can't rely on the natural entertainment of trees, bushes, and friendly strangers.

Sometimes Eva watches me cook and I explain it to her. I keep telling her that she's going to grow up to be an amazing cook. This is what I think they call brainwashing because both Donovan and I hate cooking and secretly hope that Eva wants to take over, say, in three or four years? :) Sometimes we also Skype family and chat which is always fun.

What do you do on long days inside?

coincidence?

2010-09-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

I was needing to get out with Eva the other day so we walked to our local coffee shop and she fell asleep in the carrier, bonus! So I read some local news and enjoyed the "ooooh, look at that baaaaby!" comments from friendly folks. Then a great coincidence happened. A brand new mommy (5 day old baby in tow) and another new mommy walked around the corner together. They both said hi to me too and we all started chatting. Turns out new mommy, Sierra, was out for the first time and her dad was in town. And semi-new mommy, Heather, and her two and a half month old baby were on their way to an appointment, only 1.5 hours late! Being a mommy is hard sometimes. But they had just met each other moments before and then they bumped into me. Coincidence? I think not.

We exchanged emails and phone numbers and off Heather went. We decided we would meet another time to talk more. Then last week I emailed them all. We are getting together this morning at my favorite neighborhood coffee shop (yes!) and chatting about babies and such (double yes!). We even are considering doing a babysitting swap so we can all have free babysitting sometime. Score!

screaming

2010-09-21T16:54:00.001-07:00

Have you ever sat with a colicky baby and felt powerless to help them? They cry uncontrollably and there is nothing you can do. Oh, it is so sad for all! Have you ever been stuck in traffic and wished and hoped the light would turn green? Me too!

Eva HATES the car.

I know, I know. You have visions of infants being lulled to sleep by the motor and parents gaily driving around town with a baby knocked out in the backseat. That is not so. I guess Eva is a social person. So the idea of riding in the backseat without a friendly face is her worst nightmare. And she will go on and on for 30 minutes at full scream power to let you know it.

Today this came to a head because I was stuck in construction traffic so the short jaunt from Berkeley to home took about 30 minutes. 30 minutes from my worst nightmare! Eva screamed the whole way.

At first things were quite calm and collected. I said things like, oh, I know, baby! I leaned back and touched her forehead. I tried rolling down the window for entertainment. Then I turned on some music to soothe her (or drown her out, I'm not sure). Then things got a bit more intense...

After 20 minutes of screaming I usually start sweating. The hormones that rush through your body when your infant is screaming in sadness/pain make you sweat and your heart race. People tell me it's a good thing to have these hormones, but my body says, EEEEKK, stop the screaming, now! I resorted to running orange lights, attempting to put something in her mouth to chew on (she's teething), tapping loudly on my steering wheeling, begging in a loud/mad voice for her to stop, and eventually plugging my ears and humming loudly.

So if you see a crazy mom in a minivan running lights, be kind. Or if you stop at a light and from the rearview mirror you can see the parent in the car behind you is going crazy, remember this blog post. It's a crazy, crazy experience.

Eva's now sleeping off the screaming tantrum. It feels all perfect and peaceful now. But in those moments, wow, I feel pretty crazy!

Hee Jung

2010-09-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

Our friend Hee Jung came for a visit last weekend. It was SO fun. We went to an AMAZING Korean restaurant. I'm a bit scared because it was so good and so close to our house. I want to go there daily! It is such satisfying food. And the courses are so well planned out. I love it! When can we go again?!

We did some local things with Hee Jung nuna (a term I recently learned, meaning older sister). We went to Lake Merritt and took a stroll. We went to my favorite coffee shop and talked espresso. I love that Hee Jung knows about shot times and the effects of different brewing on overall taste. We had two rounds, I won't lie :) We also toured the Cal campus and walked around Tildon Regional Park, my favorite! It's so beautiful there! It sounds busy but it was somehow soul filling and relaxing just to be together and to talk and to really be heard. I have a special place in my heart for my colleagues from Fuller. Especially my soul friend, Hee Jung! Thanks for coming to visit me, I know it's a long drive!

i think i'm falling in love...

2010-09-02T21:39:00.000-07:00

Oakland has this amazing coastal air. The mornings are cool and the afternoons are bright and beautiful. Little old men, hipsters, and mommies alike gather in one of seven coffee shops within walking distance of our place to converse each morning, and yes, you can often get a pretty amazing breakfast at these places as well which is not as gross as it sounds to a Portlander. There are several hidden "sanctuary" spots although I will not name for both the person who reads my blog and is not in Oakland and to keep the local secret a ... secret! People are super friendly, especially when we go to the Rose Garden and see families in our neighborhood meeting and chatting. Plus we one of our neighbors is this great little home for the disabled and there is always plenty of activity there throughout the day with people saying HI or BYE as we stroll along. There are magical trees in our neighborhood. I don't know what they're called nor have I ever seen them in the Northwest, but they are stunning, and when the light comes through them it's a spiritual experience. And when I am really seeking quietness and a holy place I go to the Mountain View Cemetery for a stroll (it's like a giant park) and listen to the silence. I really needed some of this space to think when I was in grad school and ended up seeking therapy for a while only to find out that my brain was really overstimulated while living in LA and space was exactly what I needed to cure it. The space to just be. And imagine. And when I'm in that place I naturally pray. Which is funny because I wouldn't say that's always the easiest thing for me. I do miss my family so much. But I went to one of these quiet spots today. And when I came home I skyped with my parents-in-law. I think I might be falling in love. With Oakland!

new eats

2010-08-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

I heard from some research that I did on the internet that babies who are breastfed can have sensitivities to the same foods as mom and dad. I was curious about this and talked to some of my friends with breastfed babies who had food sensitivities. I also talked to my pediatrician who basically said there's no research on it but he's only heard antidotes (with a look on his face like, "you're crazy"). I guess he didn't read this article. I still like him though, I just feel bad for US doctors who get no background in natural health. It could really help them and their patients! Anyway, I digress.

After spending the time talking to these people and reading up on my own as well as watching Eva's spitting up and eating habits I came to the conclusion: Eva is sensitive to tree nuts and dairy. I know this sounds crazy, but Donovan had nothing but an almond butter sandwich the other day and he heaved like no one's business until it was all expelled from his stomach. We don't usually have almond butter (this was at a friend's) so this had never happened before. But he does try to talk after eating nuts and often chokes on his words. So it's slight. But we just figured that out this month too. And of course I'm allergic to dairy... sigh. I hate it but it's true. And it's even more true now then before unfortunately. So the whole theory on what we're allergic to, she is having a hard time digesting early in her life makes sense. Sorry Eva, our genes are crap. No ice cream or trail mix for you (Note: this is just a joke. Eva is very likely only "sensitive" and not allergic, which means she will very likely be able to have those foods when she is on solids and it is appropriate for her to be eating them, ie. later in childhood).

So this all started when I was in Portland I ate a handful of almonds on an empty stomach before a big breastfeeding meal for Eva one evening and she had the most explosive and painful throw up I had ever seen. That was the day that I started to realize something was really wrong and started asking questions.

Unfortunately there is some ambiguity whether or not coconut falls into the tree nut allergy realm. The FDA has recently switched opinions on it, saying it is a part of the tree nut allergen foods, but there are only about 10 total documented cases of coconut allergies. This is only the beginning of the madness to finding foods I can eat. Last night I went to the restaurant 30 minutes early before meeting friends to read the menu and talk to a nice waitress who helped me find something dairy (butter, milk, cheese, milk derivatives) free AND nut free. Boy, I felt crazy! Even in Berkeley oddly enough.

My one sad thing in this all is that the US has really poor regulations on milk in foods and you have to basically completely change your lifestyle, like always cook from scratch and never eat a processed grocery food item and never eat out. Well, I'm not that extreme. The alternative is memorizing or always having with you a long list of words that don't always look like "milk" but basically mean... milk. Why can't we just have some kind of marker on our foods/drinks at the store, like "L" for lactose free. And really mean it! Because I recently found out that "dairy free" powder (the kind used in coffee at church and as a base for bubble milk teas) actually has a milk derivative in it, and yes, it makes Eva and me very, very sick. So PLEASE at the least, don't do fake "milk free" advertising! But in the UK and many other developed countries they are much better at this than the States. Makes me think the milk companies have something they're hiding!

In addition to this there is a long list of foods that are just generally not recommended for breastfeeding moms. Coffee being the most notable on the list. And broccoli. I really love broccoli.

But if you could just see her face when she is eating and it is good milk, you would know why I think that this is totally worth it!

skype

2010-08-22T20:46:00.001-07:00

Skype has been so great! Eva met Grandma Terri for the first time on Skype and we have had several talks with her since then as well. Tonight we talked with Donovan's parents and grandparents (Oma and Opa) and they got to see Eva again, I think this is our third time talking with the four of them. While we are sad we can't be with family in Oregon (especially during these beautiful sunny days in the NW) we are so glad for Skype. We have talked with several others as well: Aunt Amy, Aunt Melissa and Uncle Scott, Eva's Great Grandma Ramona and Eva's Great Great Aunt and Uncle Bailey. I loved the reaction we got out of the eldest generation about Skype! Molly thought that it was too expensive and didn't want to say anything as to not be a burden. You should have seen how excited she was when she heard it was free and could see Eva! This is one of those times that you get the feeling that your child is growing up in a world much different than yours!

what a social baby!

2010-08-19T08:46:00.001-07:00

Eva loves her mornings in her chair. Recently I've put her little hanging animals above her and she loves it. It looks like she's having a conversation with these little creatures. This is great for me because she actually entertains herself. She is so social, she usually can't stand being in a quiet room alone. So this creates little friends for her to talk to. Yesterday she screamed after 5 mins or so and the look on her face was so priceless. It was as if she was saying, these people won't talk back to me! I'm done!

This was further established when our friends Ryan and Jon came to stay with us. I came out to the living room after hearing Eva wake up from her nap to find the two of them chatting together and having a good old time! During their stay Eva did very little fussing because Jon was so new and interesting and loved talking to her. Want to stay with us for a few more months Jon?

So in no time Eva will be talking to strangers, although she kinda already is because everyone and their mom (and grandma) want to talk to this pretty blue eyed baby. And she talks back of course.

Oh, Lord, please give us patience for those teenage years!

our birth story: part two

2010-07-08T15:10:00.001-07:00

Just before Sadie came I was chatting with Donovan and a nurse about who knows what and I was sitting on a chair trying to get a new position. The nurse was saying something very wise and I was nodding and listening as a good therapist accidently does even when their not on the job and then... what was that?! Um I'm sorry to interrupt, but, I think I just peed my pants! She replied that it was okay, that it was my water breaking and that more would come. (At that point about 8 oz of amniotic fluid had come out.) In confusion and embarrassment I stood up thinking I could make it to the bathroom from there. WHOOPS. It all rushed from my body.... maybe a gallon?! It felt like it at least. I laughed. I didn't know what else to do! Donovan stood and watched from about 4 inches away, as the nurse did as well. I laughed and the fluid went shoooosh, shooooosh, shooosh! I was early enough along in my contracting that I had the awareness to be embarrassed. I think just after that was when I crossed the threshold (I have to be honest, I've never quite returned to my former level of modesty since then). Something about being in a room with 10 physicians, your husband, and your doula begging God for the pain to end with every body part showing and everyone staring at your most intimate places and putting in instruments and asking others to look makes you a different kind of person. Perhaps it's like walking the PCT in that way :)

Sadie did arrive. Thank God. She said peaceful, soothing things to me and told me the most encouraging words. Somehow in that animal like place, where you think you might die, somehow a woman who has survived childbirth is like an angel. She can tell you that it will be over soon and you believe her. She can tell you that you are taking the contractions fabulously and you know it's true. She can tell you that you're managing the pain more peacefully and meditatively than she did... than anyone she's ever seen... and you believe her. Now, I'm not sure whether or not these things are true, but she said them. And as much as I am faithful to my husband and love him so very deeply, this was somehow something that he could not do. Like I said, thank God Sadie arrived.

Sadie said that I was at 5cm when she got there. Several times after the birth when we talked she said I went from 5cm to 10cm "like that (SNAP)!" This was also very foggy because my images of pushing are so burned into my brain that the prior hours melted away. I think this is medically proven; some chemical is released when you're in childbirth or shortly after that inhibits your brain from putting short term events into long term memory. Don't quote me on that one though. I think it's a great device if it's true though. God knows I would only have one child otherwise.

One small memory I have of that time is demanding that I have a shower. It only lasted a minute or two but I wanted them to pluck me from the shower when it was time to go. I was enjoying the warm feeling of the water and it made the contractions so much more bearable. There was a small older asian woman helping me at that time and telling me crazy things about how to push and I didn't hear anything she said but I do remember saying something to the extent of that's not helpful, please stop talking.

The reason why the shower was so short was because the baby's heart was not doing well as I was contracting. They had all the monitors on me still (going on 24 hours at this point!) and they were still slip sliding/itching/plugged into the wall/making me crazy! When a woman is in labor and has to pee the last thing someone wants in the 45 short seconds between contractions is the nuisance of unplugging monitors and carrying cords around.

I remember such a feeling of relief when they measured me and found I was near 10 cm. I had asked them a couple times to check and you could tell by their faces that they would do it as a favor to me but they knew I wasn't anywhere close. Before I knew what was happening I felt something well up in me and for the first time I let out a big loud noise, UGGGGH! I was pushing, and there was no one telling me anything different! Now I remember some books saying to imagine yourself sitting on the front of a train going very very fast (to be able to acknowledge the power of the pushing and contractions without having a fear of them). Of course I forgot all of that in that crazy moment.

Dr Anika checked my dilation and said I was at 10 but there was a lip still and I couldn't push yet. Mid sentence another one came and out came the animal sounds and on I went pushing. STOP she said, but I couldn't. I wasn't trying to be disobedient but my body was doing it, my mind was gone or on a different planet, I wasn't sure. I definitely wasn't listening though. They physically manipulated the last lip of the cervix to full dilation (not sure how that all works) and said okay to pushing. What a relief! I only lasted one contraction where I actually held it in like they told me and it felt like, I don't know, a monster was trying to escape from under my skin! Now, on to the good stuff, pushing this baby out!

Some snippets from my "pushing time": Lisa the nurse sitting with her back to us, faithfully putting information into the computer all the while not having the time to really do any client care. Poor thing. Donovan was on my right side, Sadie on my left, each holding a foot. Each saying amazing things like, you are strong, use this next contraction, you're doing so well!, keep going! Later and sort of embarrassed Donovan told me that I defecated during this time, but added that it didn't matter as much as he thought it would because there were more important things going on.

I was on my back, against all my natural birthing books advised me. At that point we were doing whatever it took to keep the baby's heart monitor beeping. And on my back was the only good position. Several times they asked me to flip on my right side. NO! Too slow of a heart beat, FLIP OVER FAST! TO YOUR LEFT SIDE! TO YOUR HANDS AND KNEES. And I would flip. Or flop. It was pretty ugly. I was so tired. And again the whole medical team would freak out because the heartbeat would go quiet. They put a screw in Eva's head to monitor her heart and took off the external monitors, thank goodness! But the internal monitor kind of scared me and Sadie had a look on her face that told me it was kind of scary what they were doing. I guess in my fog I could only say yes. At some point the nurses changed shifts. The next nurse did not realize what we had been through to determine that the normal positions (that they try when a labor isn't progressing) wouldn't work. So we did the whole flipping routine again. At one point they asked and I said, I can't. But I will, if someone picks me up and flips me for me. I think everyone laughed and said I would have to do it and I was so tired, so sad. I flipped on my left side like they asked and then again to my hands and knees (on the bed) which felt so nice when I got there but they said no and asked me to lie on my back again.

This is my favorite part. We were back to Sadie holding one foot and Donovan holding the other and me pushing with all my might. I remembered something: I am an athlete! And I pushed with all my might like I would at the end of a hard race or game. During one of these last-minute-of-the-Iron-Man pushes, Dr Anika said, wow, I saw the head on that one. There was commotion in the room and she asked if Donovan wanted to see. He was unsure. Then he was curious. Then I pushed and she pointed to the head. And he said there? And she said Yes! Lots of black hair! And I was curious and excited and invigorated. And Donovan was confused looking and kind of grossed out looking, but I think he was excited too. The first day Eva was alive I kept thinking, maybe she's not ours if she has all that black hair! The pushing went on for what felt like an hour. It was 4.5 hours. Somewhere during this time Dr Anika said my pushes were strong and I was looking good. Then we had "a talk."

The doctor explained that the baby wasn't coming down. They weren't quite sure why because they said my pushes were very strong. Something must be wrong: her position or something but they weren't sure. She was at 0, which meant pelvic bone level, and in order to come out she had to come down to +4 (4 cm further down the canal). In order for them to do an assisted vaginal birth (vacuum, forceps, etc) she would have to be at +2. I pushed a few more times, nothing. At that point Anika said, let's do a C section, what do you think of that? And I said I don't know. I don't want to, what are the options. And things like "pressure on the baby" were said but I can't remember any sentence formation by that point. I felt like it was the option between both me and the baby dying right there on the table or a cesarean section. I felt resigned to this new way of meeting our baby. I felt a little renewed energy. We get to meet OUR BABY!

The big doctor lady came in to see what exactly was going on. She was very nice. She asked politely if she could see me do a contraction before we resigned to surgery. I said, no, thank you. Give me the pain medication for the surgery and let's get this over with. They asked me several times if I was sure I wanted to do the c section. I said, yes, as long as you can get me there fast. These contractions that were doing nothing were killing me! At that point I felt like it was communicated to me very clearly: your contractions aren't worth crap. They aren't going to push out this baby no matter what. So as each one came my clock ticked and ticked. Now I was looking at that clock by gosh! We signed loads of paperwork (the baby could be cut, okay? sign here. you could lose bowel control for life, okay? sign here. you may have nerve damage and can't sue us, okay? sign here! all on the labor table! my signature was crazy looking and I was only barely with it enough to realize that but not be able to fix it.) They said it would take 30 minutes to prep the surgery room, they all disappeared and started washing their hands and using new gloves and running about. I think it was 4:30am Sunday by then. It took 45 minutes, and you better believe I was counting it. I just remember looking at the clock and thinking, what on earth could they be doing?! For a lady totally against pain meds I was pretty funny in that moment. Well, if a c section is imminent and pain meds are on their way then why don't they start pumping them into me? NOW!

In time I was wheeled to the surgery room. Donovan waited for me in the labor room with Sadie. She said her goodbye, as she had been there over 12 hours, as long as her contract allowed. She said she would see me later that day after she had napped. I was very serious. The room was SO BRIGHT, there were a million florescent lights. They picked me up as a team and put me on a different table. It was skinny and long, about 10 inches wide. They asked, could I sit cross legged? NO! Are you sure? YES! At that point all I could think was, are you crazy to ask a woman in labor something like that? So we compromised at me sitting with my legs dangling on either side. They explained how it would feel to get the pain meds and what they would do to me. There was a short bee sting, then they laid me down. And slowly I returned to the human race.

The pain meds set in and there was nothing to do but wait until they were fully done anesthetizing me. So we talked about moving and Don's new job. About Portland and the weather and my family and how we didn't know what sex the baby was. We talked about my days in college and how I dissected a cadaver and how Donovan was a theology major turned software developer and yes he was very squeamish. So don't make him look. I was funny and I felt so good and I made some jokes, but now that I think about it, that might be the pain meds talking.

Donovan arrived and I greeted him so cheerfully. My head was next to him and a big blue sheet was up so we couldn't see anything past my chest. Several doctors worked on the other side of the sheet. One doctor (the pain med doctor) stood with Donovan and me on the other side and explained how things were going. Do you feel anything? Nope! And away they went. Donovan and I chattered nervously. It was hard to imagine we would be parents soon! I think we said this a few times. We must have been so delirious by then! They asked how we would like to do things. We decided they could show us the baby and announce the sex when we saw it, but not before! The several doctors in the room were all women and they were all so excited! What would the baby be?! They shouted a few times so all could hear, no ruining the surprise! We are all going to be quiet and wait!

At one point someone said something and I realized the baby was out! There was a freakish quiet in the room and I was so scared. Was the baby alive?! Seconds passed and still no noise. Then a squeal! Yippee! Such a petite little sound. And then nurse arrived on our side. I saw a little gray alien and a big umbilical cord clamp (which I thought was a penis at first) and they said IT'S A GIRL! And I looked and thought, no way! And they said it again, and I was so overwhelmed with love and joy, I was so glad to see our beautiful little girl!

...

birth story

2010-07-06T13:08:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine started writing her birth story and asked me to blog about mine too. It feels very raw still and difficult to do, but those are the best stories! So I will make my slow attempt, but it might take a few entries.

As many of you know, I went to the hospital two weeks before Eva was born and was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia. They kept me in triage for 7 hours and sent me to a recovery room overnight to keep an eye on me. How annoying! Only now I can see how childish it was of me to stress so much about such a small thing. In comparison to our birthing journey, this seems so uneventful. Something helpful that came out of that time was hearing the many women come through triage and some of them being sent unexpectedly to Labor and Delivery. Only two weeks later I would be one of those ladies.

I walked from our apartment to my OB appointment, this was around 1pm. It was the Friday before Memorial Day. Donovan was working from home and we ate a sandwich at home together for lunch around noon. Then I headed out, waddling through our steep (downhill) streets, saying hello to the friendly golden retriever, and walking into the dreaded Kaiser building. I poke fun at Kaiser and sometimes I feel bad about it. But the layout is so dreadful and I often was sent to 3-4 different offices on their campus in one visit (non stress testing.. in the basement, OB office, OB check in on a different floor, L&D.. across the street, or the lab). Did anyone ever think, oh, maybe new moms and very pregnant women, with high blood pressure to boot!, shouldn't be doing all of this stressing out and walking around? And then did anyone ever think, hmmm, maybe taking their blood pressure right when they walk in the door is a bad idea? Just sayin. I only later realized how unique it is that Eva and I can say I walked to the hospital on the day of our birth. It almost sounds like one of those fake stories (I walked uphill in the snow for two days!).

My OB appointment lasted about 5 minutes. I took my time and asked the lady to delay my BP test because I had just arrived. My doctor did a quick exam and noticed I was not dilated at all and my cervix was too high to feel the baby's head. We did a quick ultrasound (which wasn't covered by insurance and cost $290!) and found out the baby's head was down. I'm not sure why this was necessary, as I had been feeling insane kicking in my ribs for the last several weeks including that day. My OB sent me off to non stress testing and then to the lab just to do some "precautionary" blood testing. I went to the lab and got the tests done. Waddle waddle down the hall, down the elevator, out the door, across the street and down the stairs. Then to non stress testing (laying down and being monitored for an hour)... waddle waddle back to the same building, finding the mystery elevator, down to the basement. No cell reception there. I got a call on the landline as soon as I laid down and got comfy. "We need you in L&D right now!" Okay, this is getting silly. Waddle waddle, back to the lab building, into another secret elevator, up to the 4th floor. That's when things went from silly to serious.

When I got there I recognized the sweet triage nurse, Emma. She didn't settle me in as she did two weeks ago. I pulled out my book and heard whispers "so, do you want me to tell her, or you?" Ut oh. Then I see a familiar face, Anika! She tells me the shocking news, "we got your results back from the lab... high numbers across the board... you're having a baby today!... call your husband" What?! I protested for a while but she didn't care. I wondered if there was any way we could hold off. I wondered if my cervix being rock hard made me disqualified, it didn't. I wondered if bed rest would help, it wouldn't. Shoot. I'm totally stuck now and all my hopes of having a beautiful natural birth at Walnut Creek hospital were slipping away. It took a great deal of acceptance to walk out of triage and into a L&D room, call my husband and say, "we're having a baby." (Actually I was so shocked and sad at first that I texted him, then called and said I wasn't kidding.)

Just one day before we had been at Kaiser Walnut Creek looking at the birthing tub (not in Oakland), dreaming of our natural birth, and imagining arriving at the hospital after I had spent a good deal at time at home dilating. We even had a cute little thing for our car that said Stork Parking! and allowed us to park in places that were special so that we could get into their delivery rooms faster. Now I was in Oakland being asked 100 questions by an intern named Will, lying in L&D, waiting for my doula and husband to arrive, in a hospital gown, at 0cm! This is not how I imagined it. Over the next two days I had to have a lot of acceptance of that, of things not being how I imagined. My doula says that I took the dramatic change of events very gracefully. I like that. I like that she sees something beautiful in those moments. Inside I was feeling crazy. And the crazy would only get worse after they put me on my first medication, magnesium.

Magnesium is to assist people with HELP syndrome (which I had, which basically means I had a whole bunch of scary and escalating pregnancy symptoms that could only be cured by having the baby... high BP, protein in my urine, etc, etc). Dr Anika told me magnesium is nothing to be scared of, and is "natural", it's on the table of elements! It was mandatory (as far as what I could tell) so that I didn't have a seizure during labor. Whew! Like I said, things were getting more and more serious. This is what it really is: a depressant of your nervous system that makes everything slower, including lowering my tone of voice and just generally making me feel like all the gross parts of being drunk but none of the happy-peaceful-drug induced feelings. Also, it meant that I could not eat or drink anything. Only later during a serious contraction did someone mention that this would not be for days (all of the labor and then 24 hours afterwards). I think the medical community seriously needs to revisit the use of anything during labor that doesn't allow food to be consumed with it. That's like asking a marathoner to fast a week before the run. What... why?! Somehow when you're in labor you can think all sorts of crazy things like this, and I did, but none come out. I was determined to be in a zen like state. I'm sure my eyes bugged out of my head on that one though!

The doctors really really wanted to hook me up to that magnesium right away but I said I need my husband and doula here to help me before I make any decisions like that. So Donovan arrived about a year later. Or maybe it was an hour later, but it felt like a year. I was so relieved when he got there. I think it was about 4pm at this time. It took my doula a little longer but eventually she came and I got hooked up and I could tell by her face that this wasn't ideal and she knew I knew it wasn't ideal but we had to roll with it. I took two little oral pills to get the dilating happening, not sure what they were even, and off we were, on a slooooow labor journey.

Between 4pm and later that night lots of staff came in and introduced themselves even though it was a three day weekend and they would be off soon. Then the next round of staff came by. The head of L&D, the anesthesiologist, the nurses. "Do you have any questions? Any questions?" Really, I just wanted to sit with Donovan and Sadie and get really peaceful. There was little time for this until the middle of the night.

What I do remember about that first phase is that Donovan was relieved and went to get a burrito for Sadie (doula), me and himself. When he came back with my burrito it sat there for hours and got cold, the nurse said I could have it 5 hours after the beginning of my magnesium. So at 9:45pm sharp I whipped out that burrito like I was going to eat it alive but the mag made me so sick that I ate half of it and then set it down. It was there for hours before Don and I had the heart to throw it out, knowing it was my only food for the weekend. In the meantime I was having contractions and not realizing it. Then having contractions and realizing it a bit. Then having crazy contractions and being irritable. Irritable about the burrito, about the lights, about the hospital policies and "pain management scales", about the silly blond haired anesthesiologist, about the ten things I was plugged into that made going pee so hard, about the mag and saline drip that made me have to go pee so bad and often, about my tiny room, about my tub that was gone. Sadie had to go home then. She would sleep and get rested for the day tomorrow. We were to call her in the morning and update her. She could work for 12 hours of active labor before she had to call in her sub. She left and optimistically said "I am hoping the contractions start coming quickly and the baby comes tomorrow evening!" By then and only then did I realize it could take more than just the next day to get through this. I was so sad when Sadie left. It must have been 10:30pm Friday or so.

Fortunately we had an awesome nurse, Jen. She helped me onto the birth ball and talked to me like a human. She let me take off all my cords and pee for a few minutes. Later I had to hook it all back together again... two attachments to the contraction monitor, one giant belt to hold everything on my belly, a whole bunch of slippery goo on my belly, two monitors slipping around on that belly, and finally a plug for the IV. Peeing with the IV in the bathroom kinda made me laugh. I thought of my dad and the many days he spent in the hospital for cancer and how tolerant he must have been to make it through all of those silly hoops, the lists of "do's" and "don'ts." And for such a sadder reason than we had to be in the hospital! That made me realize things are really not so bad. Sometime in the middle of the night Jen left. We didn't realize that Jen was leaving before our baby came (of course, how could one nurse stay on forever?) and we were sad to say bye. Nurse Lisa came to our room and introduced herself.

Sadie had set up a focal point for me with a picture of a baby and candles. There were pictures of Donovan and me and a tiny little onesie. I remember looking at that onesie and thinking about how a little baby would be in it soon! It seems so theoretical. Now she's napping in the bedroom and when I peek in on her she is doing all of her classic behaviors... looking a little pouty face and grouchy, sleeping with her arms above her head, slouched down in her bouncy. I love her. I absolutely could not believe this at that time. I think I conceptualized birth as the end of pregnancy, a painful crescendo to the swelling-sleepless-unflattering-sushi fasting-period of my life, a torture simply for torture. Things get really primal in labor. I think you could tell a laboring woman that this is not true but somehow rationalization doesn't exist in that place. I remember Donovan putting the onesie on the back of the labor bed when they had me on my hands and knees and I was so delusional. I could barely even keep my eyes focused and my head straight.

Those next several hours were contracting and resting, contracting and resting. We listened to music... then we listened to silence because I got irritated. We turned the lights down. Donovan helped me pee. I peed alone. The clock didn't exist. Really, once I had fully dialated that was so eventful that this period of dilation and early active labor are somewhat of a cloud to me. Nurses kept promising that they would move me out of the tiny room we had been placed in. At some point we were moved and we were on another floor.

Around 5pm Saturday I recall having a crazy conversation with Donovan. "Tell Sadie to come!" "Are you sure?!" "Yes! Tell her to come now!" "Now, are you sure?" "YES, NOW!" I was irritated to waste my precious breath on convincing him and because Sadie couldn't arrive instantaneously. The pain became so intense! Maybe it wouldn't feel so bad if she was here!

....to be continued...

Eva

2010-07-02T23:00:00.001-07:00

I love her little nose. Sometimes it flares, those teeny tiny nostrils getting as big as they can and I call her my hippopotamus.

She has these lovely little coos. Everytime she does it my heart melts. "ooooh!"

Her little eyebrows have such character. They twist in wonder and curiosity, just like adults!

I love looking in her big eyes and seeing the reflections in them. There is plenty of time for this when we're breastfeeding or burping.

She loves gazing at the trees and the bright sky. She loves being in her stroller and going for walks.

I love stroking her soft baby hair.

I love looking at every inch of her... seeing every part of her skin and just observing her.

When I am holding her and feeding her I can't imagine anyone ever wanting to hurt a child. It makes me shiver just to think of crimes against children. I can never imagine what a parent would feel if something bad happened to their child.

I love showing her things and realizing they are brand new to her. A human being who has never seen grass! Never heard a certain word... "car"! Never smelled a flower, never listened to jazz, never watched someone cook, never seen someone brush their teeth. I love realizing this is her first time doing something. Her first time eating, her first poop, her first time outside, her first time in a car. Her first walk, night at home, month of life, time at the beach. My time flies quickly!

I love this little girl!

I worry with Donovan about the future. Will she learn compassion and empathy? Will she have a beautiful nose? Will she be something smart and great? Will she love us or reject us? Will she know and love God? I guess it's a parent's work to wonder about a child and pray for their protection and to at times feel lost in the smallness of our parenting and the largeness of the unknown.

we had a baby!

2010-06-07T18:54:00.000-07:00

We had a baby girl! She is sweet smelling and has little legs that fold up like she's still in the womb. We are enamored and couldn't be more thrilled. Yes, it is very hard to wake up in the middle of the night and feed and diaper when I am tired.... usually once around 1:30am and 4:30am, those are the hardest times. But when I look in her eyes when she is breastfeeding it is so precious and it's all worth it. She is a sleepy little girl... she had jaundice but as of today it is under control, I was so glad to hear the good news when the doctor called!

Right now we are reformatting my computer so I don't have all of my pictures uploaded to a place where they can be accessed, but I will put them up somewhere soon and I'll let you know.

pregnancy in a nutshell

2010-05-27T16:34:00.001-07:00

In the last days of pregnancy I thought I would write some thoughts on this journey, as it is soon to come to an end (enter sigh of relief).

Early in pregnancy:

I was so excited to tell Donovan! I found out at work one day via email from Kaiser. I called him and I think he thought it was a joke :) He had to ask "really?!" a few times.

I kept the pregnancy a secret at work for a while (I wanted to at least wait 12 weeks) but eventually the whole staff knew. They liked to tease me about being out of breath when I walked up the two big flights of stairs. I was a little frustrated that my coworker had the great idea of walking personal notes up to the 2nd and 3rd floors at the end of every work day as a "plan B" to our daily email reminders for the same information. Somehow even though the baby was so small my breathing was so seriously labored, even by week 10 or so. Sometimes I had to sit down in their offices and just laugh at myself.

One day at work I ate a big plate of pineapple and a box of mushrooms for lunch. I definitely got some stares. My coworkers didn't know yet.

During the first difficult weeks I spent a lot of time in our filing cabinet room taking quick naps while other clinicians were in session. I could hardly stay awake enough hours of the day to drive myself to work, work, and come home and crash on the couch. Apparently baby making is quite the chore, even when it's the size of your fingernail!

Donovan did a lot of cooking and ordering pizzas for us when I was in my first trimester. The kitchen made me sick and the thought of walking around and cooking sounded so exhausting. I would be hungry but I would rather starve at that point than make myself something to eat. Poor baby, it didn't get the best of nutrition then. I did take my vitamins though!

We had a little habit of going to Five Guys during that time. I couldn't help but feel really compelled to eat fatty and protein rich foods. (Yuck! This sounds so gross to me now!)

I felt the baby move for the first time just before Christmas. So sweet! At that time it was like a little belly gas moving around... just the faintest jitter and if you tried to feel it from the outside you couldn't.

My first thoughts of the baby are... who is this person going to be? How do we want to parent? What are some values that we want to stick with in parenting?

Mid Pregnancy:

We took a trip to Oakland, Don found new work, I put in my termination notice, we moved, I lived alone for five weeks, we Skyped... what did we not do?!

I found out my sister was pregnant too, and only 7 weeks behind me. It's so cool that I'm going to be an auntie! I'm really excited.

I think I felt pretty normal during this time. I was growing, yes, but no more food aversion or nausea and I had my energy back. It was like someone flipped a switch and I was myself again.

I looked into birthing centers and doulas only to learn that my research was not applicable since we would be in the Bay area, but it was an interesting journey. I did more reading and learned even more about myself, babies, development, birth, breast feeding and nutrition.

I really let some things go with my work situation. Where I had otherwise felt frustrated and trapped I started to learn to laugh at it and let go, knowing I am only one small piece to a big agency and it takes more than just me to change things. I got a lot of interesting comments from clients and families about my growing belly, some were very anxious about what was going to happen when I left and when I would be back.

I made a creepy movie of the baby moving in my belly in sent it to Don. You could see an extremity (foot?) move from one side of my belly to another. Aliens are taking over!!

I think my thoughts of the baby during this time were somewhat distant. Labor did come to mind once in a while but it still seemed too far off to think about. I think God provided some clarity for me during this time to worry about other stuff (work, packing, moving, etc) which was really good.

Late pregnancy:

People are so funny. East Bayers are much more talkative with strangers than Portlanders and will say the craziest things to me. Last week a homeless man just kept shouting "BEAUTIFUL!" at me. Of course I'm feeling more like a boat or an elephant so I just have to laugh and be grateful. One guy in Portland during my 4th or 5th month was not as nice and said "Pop, pop, pop, looks like you're going to pop at any time!" Of course I was thinking, no "Mr, I'm not, I have another 20 weeks to go."

My back is in pain. I will leave it at that. This kind of pain cannot be described and I can only say Donovan has been a great support with this and has put in a lot of hours to help me.

The baby is so heavy and so strong! I used to feel the baby kick and try to get others to feel it. Sometimes I felt a little crazy... yes, there really is a baby in here! But now it is so big and so strong that you can visibly see my belly move around, there's no guessing. Today I was reading with a book propped on my belly and the book was doing the roller coaster movements. How strange how it all happens without me trying or moving!

My feet are enormous. Most of the time it's funny. Like last night at the party we went to and how long it took me to put my shoes on at the door before we left. Sometimes it really hurts though. Think diabetic feet. When I wake up in the morning it's the worst and I have to get my blood moving. It's like I have a leather boot on all the time and it's strapped on really tight. I can't wait for the swelling to go down. Any new moms know when this happened after birth? I hope it's instant. It's been 7 weeks now of this swollen craziness. That makes the constant urination, limb numbness, lack of sleep, and indigestion all seem like a piece of cake in comparison (note: back pain does not make this list :))

We got a doula. It's relieving to have a plan and a team. We will work in the coming week or two to solidify my "plan" and to work on positions and other education that is helpful to have before labor. Yea!

My thoughts about the baby now... it seems so big and so real. I can't believe it's still in there and content. Lately I've been cheering for the baby, "come out and meet us," "come visit us," "when are you going to come see us?" It seems incredibly human and responsive, unlike the way it did when we first got pregnant and saw that little jellybean shape on the ultrasound. For example, last night it came right next to Donovan's belly and kicked him when we were lying down in bed belly to belly. Then Donovan started talking to it with his face next to my belly and it moved around and kicked by his voice. This reality makes labor all the more real and daunting. It's on my mind daily. In so many ways the pain of late pregnancy makes me want to go in labor soon, yet in other ways when it is mentioned that it could come at any time I am always thinking, "Not right now! One more day!" All in all I consider the pain a gift, without it I would have no motivation to go through the crazy pain of labor.

its okay that death never feels "okay"

2010-05-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

The final part to my letter...

I also think experiencing grief has allowed me a greater joy for what I do still have. At a certain point after he died life returned somewhat to normal again. And now my new normal is knowing that sometimes I am sad that my father died, sometimes telling people about him, sometimes being angry at him or selfishly want to talk to him and have a wise mind to bounce things off of. Normal also just means doing regular things too and not thinking about him at all, like working or talking with friends or going to church. I feel that the majority of that first year I waded through death, through the dark places, through questions and injustice, and through the feeling of things being “cut short.” But there is something different now, like I can experience moments of joy and really embrace them in a way I couldn’t before. It isn’t just that ticking clock that is gone, although that does change things for sure, and mostly it’s a relief not to hear it all the time. It’s like, when my husband and I really connect or I get really excited about the baby that is ready to come in June or something really amazing happens with my church body or my friends I can really praise God for those moments because I know that they are fleeting but they are those same things that are little pieces of me (and them) that are impressed on each other for this short time we have on earth that no one else can share. Those are the same things I hold dear even now with my father... the days we could fit side by side in a big arm chair and watched TV, how I used to try to lace up his work boots for him in the morning as a young child, the first time he taught me to make coffee, our frustrating adventures of me learning to drive, our recent trip to the Gorge with the dogs.

I can’t say grieving is all over. Just this morning I was thinking of him when I was making breakfast and wishing he would have eaten healthier to perhaps lower his likelihood of getting cancer or increase the quality of his last years of life. Things pop up at church a lot too, like last week when we talked about the healing that Jesus did of the man at the well and how my father and our whole family prayed for years for healing and it never happened. I cried like a baby and in my heart I wondered why some are healed and some live a crippling painful death that lasts for years. I guess in some sense I resolve that by being grateful that God allowed for us to have more time with him on earth to enjoy before he died. But I still miss him. Sometimes Donovan says something about my behavior (like stubbornness or impatience, traits that many women in my family have not just me) and says something about empathizing with my dad for dealing with us all for so many years and I am somehow softened and warmed by my dad showing up in our day.

Grief has been quite the journey. It is messy and so not easily categorized as some clinicians may explain it to be. I was all over the board in those five years. And in the aftermath in the last 14 months I have experienced new feelings I never new I had in me and old feelings that have been there in this whole process too. At first I made long lists of why he got cancer, I worried about getting it myself and about my children getting cancer one day. I blamed his work, I blamed him, and I blamed God. I tried being normal and moving forward with life as if nothing was wrong, I tried processing how it had taken a toll on me and even saw a therapist for a long period of time specifically about how this was changing our family system, and I tried being intentional with him. The truth is, we can do all we can do to prepare ourselves for death but we can never really accept it, we can never really feel okay with it. My pastor at the time of my father’s death shared with me a scripture that comforted me saying essentially that... that on this earth there is pain and death and injustice but in heaven it is different because God brings completion and wholeness. So our humanity has us right on target, it feels bad, it feels undone, and that’s okay. So maybe I will always feel that... I’ll feel sad my child doesn’t get to meet it’s maternal grandfather, I’ll feel sad that my father’s life was mostly work and no retirement, I’ll feel sad we never grew into a good adult parent/child relationship, but the good news is that with God there is wholeness and completion and all the things we long for because God longs for those things too.

I hope this helps piece a few things together as far as how I have traveled this road of grief thus far and gives you some real life material to use for class.

Peace to you in your own journey, as I know it is a difficult road.

~Em

then we all cried, and somehow that soothed me

2010-05-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

My father had a hard time with his mother. He was always in contact with his parents and they all lived in the Portland area their whole lives. I think he wanted to be a good parent because he knew he didn’t get the kind of emotional support that he needed from his parents. But something about being raised the way he was made him unsure at the same time, not confident that he was doing parenting right, not fully able to let go and be honest with me and my siblings, never able to say “I’m sorry” or show weakness. Death opened up this big door for me and I feel like in a few ways, I know my father more fully and cohesively now than I did when he was alive. The pieces of how his childhood affected our parent/child relationship became clearer. I started to see how complicated it was to be raising adult children while he was managing a very difficult adult child/parent relationship himself. As a family therapist I feel enriched by learning more about our family dynamics and history in this last year in a way that people are not open to talking about unless someone has died. But no one in the profession really wants to know personally even if there is benefit in being able to empathize with others, because it means you have to walk that hard road yourself. In addition to the family piece, I heard many stories at his funeral and in the week before the funeral as visitors came to my mom’s house from his friends, coworkers, old high school buddies, etc. I was starting to see that there were things that everyone knew: he loved people and hearing people’s stories, he never complained about his cancer or aches and pains and almost to a fault did not let others be burdened by his pain, he loved his family and loved telling others about family events, and he was a very ethical man and worker. There was so much freedom for me in knowing that others knew this too.

The day that he died we were called at 3 or 4am. We were asked to meet my mom at the house... the worst request ever. That meant there was an emergency that couldn’t wait until morning, and that meant that he wasn’t being rushed to the hospital. I had stayed up the night before researching furniture on the internet and I nervously told Donovan about all the strange Craigslist discoveries I had made, trying to put out of my mind the urgency, the car ride, the possibilities. We were both in our pajamas. I could tell Donovan was really concerned by the look on his face and by a few things he said to try to snap me out of my chatter, but I couldn’t imagine what it could be and I didn’t want to until I really knew. I remember having this urge to yell at Donovan once we got within a mile or so, JUST GO FASTER. But I didn’t say anything, I knew it was crazy and that nothing could make it better. I ran from the car when we got there and my brother in laws were both outside looking sad and saying I should go inside. From there I can’t remember anything. I think my mother told me he died and I yelled some questions back at her very harshly and she held me while I cried. At one point the funeral home was called and we were given a chance to say our goodbyes to his body before they came. I hated to see him dead but I sat there for a long time. I thought, in my denial and fear, that I saw him breathing and that there was something we could do. I tried to tell others but they told me I was imagining it. I remember after that sitting there and thinking how very strange it was that he was not looking back at me. I had never sat with my father before and tried to make eye contact and gotten back a distant stare. In the following days I asked questions about everything, and I was stuck on what could have been done to avoid his death that night. Although when I thought about it I knew that if he had lived it would eventually happen anyway.

That first day I saw his clothes folded up from the day before with his change in his pocket. I saw all the food he liked in the fridge and felt strange when I sat down in his favorite chair as a few guests arrived at the house. I think I went into a frozen mode. I called everyone in the phone book on my mom’s behalf and told them the news and how to contact us about funeral information. The first call was hard but after that I became fine at it. I was surprised at how childish some of these big parental figures were when I spoke to them on the phone. I was surprised that they needed me to say he is in a better place without pain; they needed to be sad and told that it was okay. Somehow this was easier than seeing someone a year later who had not heard the news (an acquaintance of ours from my elementary school days). She simply asked “how are your mother and father?” and I cried, not knowing what to say. I eventually got out that my dad had died a year earlier but I felt embarrassed that it made me cry right there in public. It was fresh all over again.

The numbness and dark cold feeling lasted that whole week after he died. I saw my most favorite sight in Portland and the only thing I could think was that my father loved and served this whole city (as a PGE worker) for his whole life and because of that I wanted to leave. I remember feeling so sad for a few days and then the first time I laughed I was in the car with my sister and I felt bad for laughing. How could I laugh again? My emotions were all over the place, and I was not myself. My mother tried to reach out to me once at the funeral home saying “you never got to grow old having a father” and I shut her down with no remorse; I didn’t even ask my husband how he was doing until days later; I broke down uncontrollably at a family dinner and didn’t stop crying for over a half hour. I lived in this weird week where time was not real and where I wanted to change it and go back one week so badly. I didn’t want the funeral to come because I wanted to process it all. I wanted the space to think. But eventually it did come. And the funeral ended up to be so very comforting. I saw others pain and loss which was so unique from mine and I realized I was not the only one hurting. It was a celebration for me to laugh and cry and to remember with a big room of other people who all had their own stories and experiences with him. I especially wondered how his mother felt being there or his older cousins and aunts and uncles, those who remembered him being born and a young child only to die at 53.

For months I was stuck on what he didn’t get in life by dying young. He was such a hard worker and wanted to enjoy retirement and never got there. I was stuck on the injustice of death. It added fuel to the fire that in the company that he was so devoted to, several other men in his line of work (working on high powered electricity lines) also got cancer but the company did not take responsibility for the cancer or deaths. I did think about eternity in the early days after he died, but having some distance from the grief I can see that his experience in heaven is far greater than any unfinished or unfair thing that happened on earth. I thought those things then but I couldn't really understand it like I do now with some distance.

When I think about what all this experience has given me I think it has made the circle of life more clear to me. I can see how family patterns can be passed down from generation to generation and how fragile the human spirit is. I can also see that there is so much to still want from life here on earth, that nothing is perfect, and in knowing that, it’s pretty freeing because we can hope in God and not this world and can look forward to our time with God, our communion, after we die. I think my dad really loved his family although he couldn’t always show it, and I think, praise God, because when we get to heaven all of those inadequacies and worries and fears and self doubt and unfinished parts of our inner person will be complete in God. How very beautiful. I am so glad my father has that and can be free.

i cried, for a very unique person was gone (Ch 2)

2010-05-24T11:01:00.000-07:00

I will say, being a newlywed has been a hard dynamic in the midst of this grief. I love my husband. He is open and honest with me like no one else has been and in many ways I feel has been God’s gift to me to show me that a man can be open and loving since I didn’t always see that in my father. But there were nights when I cried myself to sleep after my father died. I felt guilty sometimes when I did it, like I wanted to just stop and let Donovan be enough for me. But my heart was so torn, so sad, so very bruised. And it didn’t feel like that would ever go away. My father was my friend. There was something about our friendship that no one else in the world could give me, and for that I cried. I grieved the loss because it could never be given back to me, it could never grow and continue, and I feared it would eventually even be erased from my own memory. My dad and I laughed together in a way that my husband doesn’t truly see as funny, I guess in a cynical way, in a so-sad-you-have-to-laugh kind of way. There is something about our person that is similar, something that is alike, something that through being socialized by him or being born from his blood makes me like him. I can’t help but have his sense of humor, and I can’t make Donovan have it when he doesn’t. I grieved that being gone. I grieved all the little tiny things I remembered us doing together as a child and I guess I was happy to have those moments and sad that the person who they were created with was gone forever. I was so sad that no more memories could be made.

There was a hope in me for a while that things would go on as normal. For so long we got used to “things being really serious” that we didn’t get phased by it as much anymore. My dad would go through a long and hard surgery and we would all pray for him and call him and check up on him when we could, but we knew that as it had been in the last few years that he would be fine and life would still limp along. Eventually he would do less but still participate. He drove us to the mountain as a family once a year, but he would ski a half day instead of a whole day. He would work until the end of his work day (3pm) but not work any overtime. He would come to family events but sit in a chair. I think towards the end of his life I got even less sentimental because one just gets tired of worrying themselves silly for over five years. It wasn’t conscious, but I thought he would always be there. Although when it came to big decisions I always remembered him and worried about his cancer and if he would be around. I moved back to Portland after graduate school was done and even rushed the process by a few months saying it was because I couldn’t find a job in Portland as a therapist and wanted to get the ball rolling. Really, I was afraid that time was running out. Several people in my church community didn’t understand why I left LA and did so quickly. I think that was one of the smartest things I did for myself in this whole process. Just four months after my move up my father died. Those four months were such a precious and fun time. I worked odd hours and had the time to come to see him at least once a week. He would take me out to eat because he doesn’t cook and I didn’t have the money to treat myself out. We would talk about very basic stuff, but it was just good to be together. I imagined (after he died) that if we had more time we would go on growing as adults in this more “equal” type of relationship, co-adults, although me always knowing that he was my father. This is more than a friend because he knew me at my birth and through every single step until the moment he died. A kind of friend that knows you like that I guess can really say what they think and you have to listen because they have such a deep context for relating to you. That’s the piece that I’m talking about when I say that Donovan didn’t really perfectly fill that grief, because although he has known me in a different way and known me for several years, there is something he can never know completely and that many cannot know, and that died and was buried the day that my father died.

So moving forward after his death is very painful. He was so interested in my decision-making as a young adult. He wouldn’t impose but he would share his concerns. He worried at times that we were too young to be married, that we didn’t have enough money to make it, and that whatever challenge we went through might break us instead of make us stronger. So the first time I moved apartments after he died I cried, knowing that he had helped me hang some practical things on the walls and helped put the pieces of our bed frame together. Once I undid them I knew I could never again say “my dad helped me do that.” The first time I got a job after he died I knew that he would love to talk to me about how it was going, and although some people in my life did that it didn’t replace his curiosity and the conversation that only he and I could have had about it. And by far the hardest thing was finding out I was pregnant almost exactly six months after his death. I was surprised at the news and so happy. But a part of me was so sad to know that my father would never become a grandfather. Moving on meant that I had to learn to make decisions and changes without him there to catch me in case something went terribly wrong. It felt venerable but it also felt good, it felt adult, it felt right for Donovan and I to stand as our own family even though it was kind of forced.

life with grief, Ch 1: faith, death and our family

2010-05-21T16:34:00.001-07:00

I recently wrote a letter to my dear friend Louis. He had asked for some thoughts on death, dying, grief, life and the family system. Over the next few days I will post a series which makes up my long letter to him. I'm doing this because I'm at this place where I really value cancer awareness but am not sure how I can contribute to the community. Maybe this can be the beginning.

It’s been a year and two months since my father died, and only now can I bring myself to say something solid about what death is, how I have grieved, or who my father is to me. I found out in August 2003 that he was diagnosed with stage three colon cancer and that in only 5% of the cases similar to his would he live longer than five years. It was more than likely that he would live less than that time, and since then there was a terrible ticking clock at every holiday, every birthday, every graduation, every Monday morning, every turn of a chapter that this could be the last time he was with us.

It is hard to live in transition in your teens and early twenties with so much changing to feel so grounded by something like your father’s impending death. My family did not really want me to move to LA for graduate school, but on the outside they were excited for me. I think everyone including myself wondered how I would cope if he died while I was away at school. One time I was deep in my spring term school work and my father was scheduled for a spur of the moment and very serious surgery. I struggled for a week to figure out what to do and then bought a plane ticket even though we had so little money and flew to Portland not knowing if he would even be alive when I got there. The odd thing was he was happy to have me there as a distraction and pretended that I wasn’t there because of the surgery. We went out to dinner. I have a picture of us there. In all of his pictures there is so much underneath the surface. If I look back at our family photos in the last five years I see his pain, his excitement to be with us, our fear that this can’t last forever, our joy that we have at least that moment, and all of us wanting it just to be normal.

When I worked as a therapist in graduate school all of this was going on... the ticking clock, the fear that I would miss something, the rest of life that was exciting and moving at a fast pace, the love that I had for my father, the anger that I had at him for not being honest with me about how he was doing physically, the sadness for the things I wanted from him as a child that I knew I would never get if he died now. By a strange set of circumstances I was offered a position working with cancer patients and their families. Some of them during the last stages of life, others in the early parts of grieving a death. I was very honest that I was sorting through those things myself and told my colleagues of my father, some of my own challenges in my family because of it, and how it affected my work. At that point I had been living with and processing my father’s illness for nearly four years, learning how to talk to people about how he was doing and how they could pray when I wasn’t even really sure what was going on with him. At times I felt like ignoring my parents and moving on with life, at other times I was more sensitive and worried and tried to reach out and help. Over those years I felt like my father wanted to keep things a secret and live life without us worrying but I felt pushed away. I remember one of the concepts in our counseling work at that agency sticking with me during the last years of my dad’s life “a new normal.” They said that families dealing with cancer have such a different perspective, but they find their new normal and live in that and often can thrive.

Our new normal was so... us. My father lost his entire retirement in the Enron scandal in 2001 and for a short time was very angry and unapproachable about the topic. He was a Christian but was not the type to sort things out externally or talk to others... especially to family and especially about his faith dilemmas. At some point we all realized that his cancer made it impossible to ever earn back money enough to live into retirement. And I’m sure he realized that he wouldn’t live that long either. There wasn’t a big event that happened but eventually we got to laughing about Enron, about how it all went down, about how blind all of the employees felt, and how in the end, it doesn’t really matter. My dad talked to me one day about God’s judgment, about what I thought happened to people like Kenneth Lay, and about living in this world when we don’t actually see justice pull through. In this sense my father is a great pillar of faith to me that I can draw on even now, even though we couldn’t talk about faith together most of the time. I can put my tiny life trials into perspective when I know that he lived through great injustice and is now with God enjoying eternity without any of that bitterness on his radar. So I guess our new normal was a humor that only we could understand, an acceptance that life is life and that our narrative with God is so much greater, and that pain will be here (like cancer, like financial ruin, like wanting more from our families and knowing we can never have it).

to be continued...

oakland

2010-05-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

This is a pic of the proud soon to be daddy the day before his MAOL graduation (and moments after his final paper defense). We are both so glad that he is finished and ready to start this new chapter. He got to celebrate graduation with some APU colleagues and they were all so nice and excited to see me and my belly. LA was so nice and an amazing time to visit old friends and go to Palm Springs. We enjoyed our last pre baby vacation.

So far the baby room is on it's way. It's at least walk-around-able and the basics are set up. Which makes me feel great. And we have a stroller and car seat in the car. So the hospital will let us take the baby home. Yea. Donovan has had several funny moments of "oh my gosh we're really going to be parents" lately. One was when he was assembling the crib and using a clean diaper to wipe down the crib wood. Oh my, how we never imagined our Saturday nights would be so exciting! :) And earlier today he tried to fit his laptop in the backseat and realized there was no room (car seat takes priority!) only to do the same thing a moment later in the trunk (oops, the stroller is there!). Life is changing. Or in his words, life has already changed.

Don is busy developing at Beezwax and trying to get in as many hours as he can. With our recent trip to LA for graduation and our hospital visit last Friday it's been hard to get in the office and clocking the hours. On top of that he's wrapping up some interesting thoughts he was developing while working on his Master's degree and hoping to read more of several texts that he started before baby comes. And last night he was working on making his own database to track student loan repayments. I think he loves order and development and learning! It's interesting to watch. Developing would be like torture to me but he really loves it. I'm curious to see how being a parent and loving the above mentioned will all work out practically. We will see.

As for me, I'm on a daily battle versus the man... Kaiser. I'm trying to stay positive about my interactions with them but every time I have new hope I am met with staff who change my frame of mind. One example is that a tech said a gendered pronoun when talking to me after an ultrasound after I had just said we are keeping the baby's sex a secret. I hope she was just being an idiot and not spoiling the surprise accidently. Another is the following story....

I did a 24 hour urine test last week because I had a bit too much protein showing in my urine samples at the OB. I dropped it off at the requested place and they said, oh, you should bring it downstairs to another floor and they'll take it. The woman down there was so confused but took it anyway. This was at 9:30am. Then at 5pm or so they called and scolded me for not bringing in my urine. This was concerning for two reasons: customer service quality and ... I just did a lot of work to collect that urine sample and they lost it?! I think this is some kind of weird test they do to see how psychologically stable you are before you give birth :) I'm not sure if they ever found it but several hours later they called and said the urine sample still showed an increased protein count and that I needed to come in the following day. So I really am seeing them now 1-2 times a week and having strange interactions with them. The good news is, just one quality person on staff can really change the experience.

I think being new to the area just makes it that much harder too... the Kaiser parking gets me confused and I was shocked to learn that it is a paid lot ($1/half hour!), the buildings are all spread out over 3 blocks and I get lost often, and the elevators are super slow but now I have to wait for them because everyone checks my BP constantly and if I climb stairs it's just bad news. So when I rant a little on Facebook about how homebirthing is really the only option for my next birth this is some of the context to my comments... I just don't know if I can handle the big Kaiser system with all of it's mishaps for another 9 months of my life. Today I had a "non stress test" done and I listened to some really chill tunes ("Making Whoopie", Coldplay and some others) to help me out... turns out my BP was "excellent" according to the tech, great news! My saving grace has been an amazing doula, Elizabeth, who has been incredibly supportive and kind. More on her awesomeness to come.

Today I am making another big mom commitment... I'm washing my first set of newborn things so they are ready when baby arrives. I love looking at the tiny arm and leg holes and thinking about it's little body fitting in there. I can't wait to meet this little person!

I miss family and friends and wonder how life will unfold here. We're getting connected with a few couples that we've met (through Don's work, Craiglist (HA!) and church) which makes me excited. And I am hopeful that Le Leche League and church can provide some more structure and support for me as a stay at home mom. It feels vulnerable and new to start a family in a new city. It also feels exciting and invigorating to be close to SF (20 minutes) and think about exploring this new world as a family.

Well, that's life where we are right now. Update us on what's new in your life too!

internet

2010-05-05T20:06:00.000-07:00

We got the internet connected in our new place! It is so great. Donovan and I haven't had it in our apartment since early 2009, wow, life is a little bit different... always looking for coffee shops with wifi and doing stuff through our phones.

Right now Donovan is surfing the internet looking up research stuff to finish off his capstone paper for his Master's degree. And I've been updating my baby registry and catching up on things.

Yea! This is a great day!

oakland

2010-04-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

Oakland is nice
...it's sunny
...the people are so friendly
...the view from our apartment is so pretty... trees and a view of the bay in the far distance. And we have lots of space. Don did a good job picking it out!
...the people at Beezwax (Don's work) are so cool. They are all so sweet. They helped us move in and ask curious questions, and are generally helpful and so kind. One family wants to give us some of their baby stuff that they are done with, nice! We shared a ride to Cupertino with another guy yesterday and he told us all about moving to the States from Guam and falling in love. So special!

I do miss friends and family. I miss good espresso. I miss my family's puppies and their mischief. I kinda miss the pleasure of working hard and getting a paycheck, even though I struggled every day at work and resented a lot of the structure of the work environment and the restriction it put on my work as a therapist. The vast difference between that and the unstructured life I live now is so strange. It reminds me of the summer after grad school when I went from full speed to relatively nothing to do.

I do have things to do though. We need to tie up several loose ends that we haven't finished up in Portland... taxes, selling our car, switching insurance, paying off some bills, changing our addresses on everything, etc, etc. But my brain seems to be easily distracted and overwhelmed and I feel like there are long moments where nothing at all gets done. For some reason when you're on the clock at work that's ok, that unproductive, spin your wheels feeling. But at home it can just be so ... I don't know... sad.

Seven more weeks til baby comes. The baby room is a mess and we haven't taken one course for parenting or birthing prep. In addition Kaiser hasn't called back with appointment info and my doula is going to be out of town around mid June unexpectedly. I do think that resolving these things and getting a few major items (ie diapers, a stroller, and a mattress) will make me feel more settled and ready. I feel like such a bad first time mom for even saying how unprepared I am. But it's true, we still live the lives of transient 20 somethings and I think it will take the baby being out of the womb for us to truly change and be somewhere.

In the last week I have attempted to reorganize my life so I at least know what I'm not getting done yet. I've moved in the majority of our stuff into it's place in our new apartment. I've met a few people from Beezwax and given my hubby some TLC after a long break apart from each other. If you think of me this week, pray that there is hope in my heart, that my efforts are fruitful, that my life finds some rhythm, and that God is in our midst. In addition Don needs a ton of prayer, for finishing up his Master's degree work in the next two weeks, for settling into his work and finding a way to schedule things so he gets compensated fully for his time, and for his stress in general. Good sleep is a big part of this for him, as many of you know.

Eventually when we come home from our celebrations in LA for his graduation we want to explore Oakland and San Francisco for the few weeks we will have before baby comes. There are some shops and a few places in the city that we would like to see... there is so much of this area that we need to explore, really. We will have to post more as we find fun new things! And then have you each down and show you them in person.

Well, here's to life in Oakland!

pregnancy

2010-04-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

I took a video of my belly tonight. The baby was doing some crazy things in there. I thought I would send it to Donovan so he could see it. Since our internet is very slow here it is not yet sent to him, but I hope by the morning it's finished going through. It kinds looks like an alien lives in there. Or it's some kind of weird joke I'm playing on the camera, although I don't really know how I would make that happen. There's a rolling look across my belly a few times. And then there's a crazy shake. I'm glad I finally caught it all on tape, it will be nice to look back on it. And no, I'm not posting it for the world to see. It's a little too weird to show my bare belly to all on the internet, and I'd like to keep this blog public so it isn't a hassle to view it. You'll have to use your imagination. Or come see me :)

spring brings changes

2010-03-21T08:22:00.001-07:00

As many of you may know, we are in the midst of transition these days. Don has moved to Oakland and started work. I am back in Oregon working and wrapping some things up. We're planning on moving our stuff down mid April. So for right now Donovan is staying with a nice coworker named Vince and his family and I'm in our apartment. Eventually we will have a couple of weeks in late April to settle into our new place. And then I will need to fly back for one of my baby showers in May. In addition, Don is graduating with his Master's degree and we will be in LA for the ceremonies the second weekend in May. I'm so excited to visit our friends in LA! We will be all around the west coast on our adventures but hopefully by late May we will be settled in our new apartment in Oakland and ready for baby Chandler to arrive.

I will miss Portland. I love the spring; Romney's mom says we have the Disneyland of springs in the northwest. I like that phrase. The people have their quirks and although it's not always perfect I think just understanding and knowing Portlanders fairly well helps me empathize with them. We will never be a part of the Voo Doo Doughnut punk crowd, we will probably never wear sandwhich boards or lay down on the bridges and block traffic for a cause, and the fact that we saw our gay mayor and his new boyfriend at our favorite cafe is still a culture shock for us. But I love this place, the weird people, and the sometimes frustrating weather. I remember going to OMSI with my parents when it was first built and when I drive to work in the morning and see Mt Hood I have 1,000 memories to draw from about our adventures there as a family. So many men around Portland have bald heads and big bellies and wear IZOD and work boots, and I can't help but think it's my dad sometimes; it's sad but it's also a comfort in some way. My sister and brother in law live close by, I'll miss driving over to their place to play games and hang out.

The good news is we hear great things about Oakland. Oakland has a soul. Oakland has some deep history. It seems the people in Oakland are as obsessed and connected to the heart of the city as I am to Portland. I am hoping to learn about Oakland and be open to finding out what it is that makes people so in love with this place. Because to be honest, if you look at the exterior, Oakland doesn't seem too magical, if you know what I mean.

We will keep you updated as we continue the new adventure!

happenings

2009-11-24T09:40:00.000-08:00

So, Don's birthday was really fun. I made two cakes one lemon and one chocolate and invited my great aunt Molly and great uncle Al over to share in the festivities. We ended up putting some candles on the lemon cake and singing for Molly too because her birthday was later that week. My mom told me it was her 72, but it was actually her 82nd, which made for some really good laughs. Molly couldn't believe we all thought that she was really 72. She is such a gem.

Work is monotonous. Sometimes I want to go live in a jungle and not shower for a few weeks, just to get outside of the norm. Oh, how sweet it is that I have Thurs and Fri off for Thanksgiving :) Yea!

Amy (Don's sis) and David will be here today from San Diego. They will stay for several days. Today Donovan is picking them up and taking them to Voo Doo Doughnuts, I may try to go too and make it my early lunch break :)

This weekend will be great! We will go to my sister Steph's house for Thanksgiving day and then to Don's aunt's that evening to see family including Amy and David, and our little cousin Kev who always wants to play play play (my way of getting out of playing on the trampoline for hours is to wear a dress every time I come over, lol). Then we are off to the beach for Fri-Sat or Sun, depending on who drives Amy and David to the airport. This is the BIG family gathering on Donovan's mom's side where we eat endlessly, play cards (and gramma kicks my butt), and we are forced every year to do a talent show, yikes! I still don't know what our talent will be this year.

I hope you are all as excited for a long weekend and Thanksgiving as I am. Nothing beats a holiday meant for family and food! :)

halloween

2009-11-01T14:16:00.001-08:00

Don and I had fun playing house on Halloween and hosting trick-or-treaters coming by. We loved seeing the little ones. One forgot his line and said "Happy Halloween!" another one waddled because he was so little and had on such a big firefighter outfit, cuteness!

We made really cute pumpkins kissing each other and ate some candy while watching the U of O game on TV. Wow, we STOMPED USC. It was great.

Dimen doesn't love Halloween, but it's ok.

Tonight is another celebration, Don's bday! I will post more later after our celebrations :)

gratefulness

2009-10-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things about working at my job is being inspired by the clients I work with. They do really hard work every day of the week. I was more aware of this when I first started working there, but I am reminding myself that the little lessons we teach our clients are lessons we can benefit from too. So in light of that I will add a list of things to be grateful for in my life just because... (and one friend did this on her blog this week and it was a good reminder!).

I'm grateful for:
1. beautiful trees on my drive to work. I love to see the change over time! Right now it's a rainbow of colors on each tree.
2. My husband! He is becoming a better cook and has been working really hard to keep me fed and happy lately :)
3. Dimen. She is my mom's dog and she is a sweetheart. I love how her whole body wags when she sees me coming home.
4. My family. My mom has been so helpful this last season and we are grateful for the time we have had with her.
5. being able to continue in my field of work and be employed at a place with a great staff and to be paid ... all in this really rough economy!
6. 6 months of free supervision that my previous supervisor offered me, he's awesome!
7. health!

What are you grateful for?

life update

2009-10-16T19:19:00.000-07:00

Don and I are living with my mom right now saving money. Our first plan was to buy a house before 11/30 when the tax credit runs out. Turns out we don't have enough employment right now (I just got my job at De Paul and Donovan is looking) and Portland has a tough job market. So we are so grateful to my mom, and so anxious to see how this step leads to other things that God is doing that we seem to not always be aware of :)

We are planning on moving back into the same community we lived in before. Same complex, new building. We will have a 1 bedroom this time, and with the economy being bad right now they have a huge sale, so we feel super blessed that this happened at just the right time. So we're excited, truly, to have our apartment community back, glad to not be underemployed and over stretched financially and so excited to move in (free cable, sauna, hot tub, pretty walking trails, and a convenience to work, friends/family, and fun places on the west side that we grew accustomed to within the last year).

I felt before that "permanency" in our mid twenties (Don's 26th is in two weeks!) was impossible without owning a home. But my mind has shifted and I really feel like our apartment will be our home in every way and the house thing was just my plans, not God's. In the meantime our 10 week stay with mom so far (we will move in the first week of Nov) has saved money in so many ways and I have enjoyed some communal living, some reminders of childhood, and some things we can't get when we are out on our own (puppy kisses, for one!).

So our address will be a bit different than it was last year (different number and apartment letter, but same street and city)... we will update you more via email as the time gets closer. I'm looking forward to this transition.

death

2009-10-16T19:11:00.000-07:00

Death seemed so mysterious, so impossible to me for so long. Maybe that's the part of being a child and a young adult, thinking that the world is yours to create with and nothing will ever end.

Since my father died I have found myself from time to time watching the world pass by in slow motion, often when I'm driving, I'll see people on the sidewalk, people in their cars, people I can observe without others knowing I see them and I realize, we will all die.

It's not sad, it's just true. We all die. And the Bible says our life is a breath in comparison to eternity. I like thinking about that, about my dad having a very wonderful and healthy breath with God and then suddenly my mother will show up in heaven, and in another breath so will I, my sisters, my brother in laws, and my husband.

I saw a man when I was thinking about these things sitting under the fall trees one morning on my commute to downtown just looking around and enjoying things. I realized how short life is, how very seriously I take my life and create stress when it doesn't need to be there, and how it might serve a much better purpose for me to live life in light of these things instead of marching along without a stillness and a peace that comes from this realization.

stories

2009-10-04T16:07:00.000-07:00

I recently read Donald Miller's new book. It was very inspiring. Basically (without ruining it for you) it simultaneously discusses what stories are and why they are important inspiration, criticizes the American status quo, and makes you want to just straight up do something with your life. After reading the book I was pleasantly (is this possible?) shocked and appaled when reading this article on Miller's blog. Needless to say, I have a lot of growing to do in my life.

But where to get started? Work in the therapy realm can be exhausting stuff. Often unappreciated hard work. Is being drained and doing something great for the less fortunate God's calling for us? I'm not sure. I do know that therapists who have rich friendships and support networks, who are constantly learning (about leaves and trees and their beauty as much as recent research and how it applies) are those that are excellent - not just good - at their jobs.

Today we spent some time in Forest Park. We were pleased to find a quiet and fun road on the way up, to find leaves that had started turning already, and to find dry ground under the forest roof although it rained this morning. I think God calls us to be with Him, and I think I experience that in the most deep way when I am hiking in the trees far removed from anything to do with the city.

I'm compiling my list now of things that really make me engage, things that are difficult but will make for a good story in my life (rather than just staring at the TV, which I admit, I do too much of now!). Somehow, in some context, being in Uganda and supporting my brothers and sisters there is a part of my story. So is working as a therapist, even when I don't fully understand that. I'm just not sure what else at this point...

Fall is here

2009-09-22T09:22:00.001-07:00

So I am back from my summer break from blogging. Fall is in the air and I'm so excited to say it's the first day of fall!

I'm now working at De Paul which is a drug and alcohol center in downtown Portland. I am the family therapist (one of four) and I work mostly with couples and parents/adult children. I also do a women's group where their family members are invited and they learn about how addiction affects families and support one another in recovery. It has been challenging, new, hard, and exciting. Working with other really sharp clinicians who have totally different experience and academic background has been one of the best parts.

September is a month we have not fully experienced here yet together, since we moved from LA 11 months ago. It is definately my favorite month! The air is warm and the days are sunny (but not too hot) and it is crisp and cold in the mornings. Ahhh.

Donovan and I have also enjoyed spending more time with my mom lately, now that we are living with her. We have enjoyed walking and playing with Dimen regularly too. She is such a gentle dog. I will post funny pics as soon as I can.

I hope you are all doing well and had a fun summer! Let me know how you are doing!

busy bee

2009-07-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

So work is busy... and so great! The thing I want to communicate here though is that my new job is rad, my boss is the bomb, my coworkers are great, my closest coworkers (all family therapists and all Christian ladies) are even greater (one is from Enterprise, to boot). I think I enjoy remembering it being 10am and then not knowing how it got to be 4pm, that happened today! I definitely enjoy being downtown and eating at food carts every day! It's really engaging and the clients are so grateful for their services and I feel like it's such a good fit for me to be there.

Today one of the long term clinicians left the agency today and as they all did their termination/processing the top boss lady talked about spirituality and work as a therapist and how we all should feel called in our being to be a better person as we work... summing it all up by saying "we get paid to learn about ourselves and become better people!" I love this place. Although I would potentially make about 40% of what I would make doing private practice if I kept this job over my entire career, I am still seriously considering never changing jobs, it's that perfect of a fit. Who knows, maybe some years down the road from now things will change. Maybe.

In the meantime I'm getting in 5-10 client hours a week in my private practice. So I'm kinda a workaholic, although I despise that word, what it represents, and never thought I would say that about myself. In fact, I pride myself on not being that person in a lot of ways. But duty calls for now, and for a while there Donovan and I only had those two jobs to depend on. Although just within the last few days he has gotten paid for an old job AND received another project to work on.

Don is learning to cook and cleaning more in the meantime. We are also moving out of our apartment in two weeks to save some money and look for our own house. Pray for us on this big endeavor, our transition period, and our financial situation!

Right now I am sitting on my porch, about to do my session notes for the evening and enjoying the last bit of summer sunshine of the day feeling very tired, content, and excited.

For the future: we are going to Seattle to visit my great friend Lindsey who will leave for Africa for a year soon. Pray for our travels and for our time with her and as a couple while we're in Seattle. Also, Donovan and I celebrate 3 years on the 22nd. This also is a prayer request because this time of year often brings up big questiosn for us while we do an (informal) evaluation of where we want to go in the next year and what our plans are.

I love you all!

plastic

2009-06-12T17:09:00.001-07:00

This lady is incredible and so inspiring to me. Kinda reminds me of going to Costco with Ruby and being super convicted about my use of plastic :) !

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7591751.stm

The author talks about giving in and buying a tube of toothpaste because homemade toothpaste tastes terrible. What are the things you would draw the line on if you did a month without plastic?

another way to live life to it's fullest...?

2009-06-11T13:52:00.001-07:00

I made a deal with myself to live life to its most before I start my job. There are just so many things that you can do when your schedule is flexible and you work mostly evening hours. For example, my favorite coffee shop is open 9-4pm... crazy, I know! Over the last week I have traveled to a beautiful part of Portland I have never visited before in the West hills, gone to my favorite meat market that is 45 minutes away, went to my first Oregon MFT meeting, watched my cousin's dance recital (and went to a soccer and baseball tournament), and gotten a million ridiculous chores done that I was putting off.

And then I got the flu!

I guess it's better to have it now and start my job later in June rather than try to do two jobs and be sick at the same time. So I'm trying to look at this as another thing I am checking off my list... being really sick! In the meantime I am watching way too much TV, sleeping, and trying to eat.

I got the job!

2009-06-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

Here is the story in a nutshell for those of you who may not know it. I walked at graduation in June of 08 for Fuller, although I still needed more practicum hours to be a MFT in Oregon so I did the summer term too. How anti-climactic to walk at a graduation when I am not fully completed with my work. I worked at two sites during the summer and did one course. During that time (Jun-Sep of 08) I started looking for jobs in Oregon online, thinking (oh so innocently!) that I would find one and be able to start in Oct of 08 in Portland when I moved here.

When all of Sept, Oct and Nov had rolled by and I still did not have a job, I opened a lease to rent space for a private practice. My thoughts were it would just be temporary while I applied to some jobs in the area. Then the economic crisis hit. Then all mental health funds were comprimised in the State of Oregon. Then all the clinics eliminated jobs, cut funding and some even closed their doors. Then in Feb of 09 I finally got interviewed at two places at once to my delight! One of them said they wanted to hire me then hired someone else. The other eliminated the position after they chose me as their top pick. Then my father died. It seemed to me that my private practice would have to become full time if I were to ever have work.

Although I never stopped hoping for more work in my private practice, at this point I really turned on the heat. I spent more money that month on marketing than I ever had before. I started seeing couples as well as individuals. I went from having 4-5 clients a week to having 10 client contact hours every week.

In the midst of this I got an email from a friend telling me about De Paul's open position. Casually, I sent in my resume thinking my chances were small. I did 4 hour-long interviews for De Paul and kept my emotions guarded, remembering what happened at the previous two places and praying that whatever was supposed to happen with De Paul would happen. At this point new unemployment numbers come out in the States saying the national unemployment rate is worsening, now last compared to unemployment in 1982. I am sober in realizing the competition I have in full time therapist positions in the Portland area and how my practicums are not the best on paper expereince compared to other therapists I'm competing with positions for.

Over the next two weeks my small group pray along with Donovan and I that God would make this possible. My group believed in me when I lost hope and faithfully said "You WILL get it!" After exactly 12 months of job searching (so exhausting!) I was so worn out. After the last interview they said they would call me that afternoon (Friday) with the news. I didn't hear from them all weekend. Then Monday passed by. Then Tuesday. I thought I might call them to check in, but I didn't know what I would say. I waited. Weds afternoon they called and gave me the job!

I'm now a full time employee for De Paul Treatment Centers :)

I will be doing both in-patient and out-patient family and individual therapy focused on drug and alcohol treatment. All I have to say is Yea God. The odds were not good for me in many ways but you provided a job and with that financial stability, the ability to use my learned skills, a stable schedule (which I live for!), and every single thing that the income from that job will provide. And I thank you.

oregon in the summertime

2009-06-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

I have to warn you. Life in Oregon is different because when the weather warms up, everyone evades all responsibility and plays in the sun. It's true. So if you don't hear from me too much on my blog you can better believe I will be doing one of the below activities, as I was doing some of these this weekend, instead of blogging.

swimming
sun bathing
eating, reading, or playing games on my patio
having a cocktail
going for a run or walk
playing bocce, frisbee, or frisbee golf
going to a park
vintage shopping on Belmont
biking

Isn't it ironic that when life gets cool enough to blog about you don't want to sit down and blog it out?

In true note format I will continue, since the last one was so fun. Some things I used to do as a kid in Portland that I truly miss doing (most of them that my dad facilitated/paid for):

water skiing
boating and then going for a picnic somewhere pristine
fishing
camping
camping
more camping!
(one thing I don't miss is long trips to Kah-nee-ta!)

I miss him.

Well, I'm off for a run. It's going to be in the 80s and high 70s all week :)

update

2009-05-28T09:16:00.001-07:00

Our time at the farm was so relaxing. We hung out with the three dogs and had so much fun. We watched movies, went to an awesome natural hot springs in the mountains, toured around the area and saw Tamarak in progress, saw the "dong dong diddily dong" town (as my sis calls it) and laughed at their different accents (secretly of course), and ate A TON. I had great bacon fresh from the farm and lots of homemade foods. Yum. I learned how Paula has to be a little creative sometimes when she doesn't have a lot of stores nearby and how her food is actually a ton better and fresher! It's so inspring. Paula said when we left the puppy, Rex, moped all day and was sad that we weren't coming back. I miss him too! The bred of dog they have is amazing and so smart, it makes me want one too. Maybe it's a good thing I haven't bought a dog yet! (You'll have to see my facebook pics and check out my pics from the weekend including Rex and the two other doggies)

In other news, I am still waiting for my 4th interview to be scheduled, whew! It's hard to be patient. This is definately a season of waiting, which is hard for me, but I'm trying.

Last but not least, I'm coming to Pasadena in June! I'm so excited! I will post again about things I'm hoping to do/things I want to eat/people I must see as the time gets closer. It will be June 17-23. I can't wait to see my LA friends!

memorial day!

2009-05-22T10:49:00.000-07:00

You know you're married to a Canadian when...

D: I have to work Friday, Mon, and Tues... are we doing anything?
E: Yeah, we're going away for Memorial Day weekend. Tell him it will have to be bumped to Fri, Tues, Weds.
D: Memorial Day is this weekend?
E: Yeah.
D: Well I can't just tell him I'm off on Monday!
E: Yeah you can.
D: So Memorial Day is on what day?
E: Monday.
D: Does everyone get Monday off?
E: Yeah, pretty much!
D: Oh
Cue discussion on what Memorial Day means.

This is how most of our American holidays unfold year after year. I hate to say that as comical as this may seem, living in the midst of it is usually not very funny to me. #111 why things are different being married to a Canadian... why is it that none of my American friends believe me when I say this? It's true! Most of the time it's really good though... for example, my husband cares about the international news, realizes that our cultural lens is often small and selfish and acknowledges it in the moment, and highly values education more so than most Americans our age do.

We plan on going to Council, ID this weekend and having a fun time with Steph, Scotty, and his parents at their farm. Surely fun photos will follow upon our return. Happy Memorial Day all!

job update

2009-05-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

Good news: I just got a call back from the clinic I interviewed at and they want to do a 4th interview. I think they have chosen me as the person to fill the position but just haven't said it directly yet. I'm trying not to get too excited but ... I AM. Hopefully this means more hours toward licensure, more experience, more stimulation professionally, more money, and possibly ... (drumroll please) a house in the near future.

More good news: I have 8 clients now and a great new marketing tool, my website! When it rains it pours! I am almost a little scared to be too successful in my private practice right now because just as soon as things are picking up I may need to slow things down a bit so I can work more in the new position. Whew! This is a better problem than the under-employment problem, but I think I will need to make sure I am making a good balance for my life and taking care of myself.

Praise God! He heard our prayers.

mom time

2009-05-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been introducing my mom to cool things in Portland that she's been missing out on. The lady has lived in Portland her whole life and has never shopped on Alberta St?! Had brunch in LO? This is wrong. Granted she's been caregiving for my dad for 5.5 years, so it's been a rough patch. But with mother's day, her birthday and two different ladies dates I have had so much fun with her in the last month. Here's to the lady who gave me life, who has amazing legs, who just paid off her house!, and who I'm taking out for a meal this morning. I love you.

therapist blog

2009-05-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

My new blog as a thearpist is at this site. You should check it out! My website is almost ready too. I'm so excited to release it! I'll let you all know when it happens.

http://portlandtherapist.wordpress.com/

Wish me luck today. I have another interview with DePaul Treatment Center!

waiting period

2009-05-12T13:33:00.000-07:00

Another weekend has flown by and the warmer weather has brought fun new things: baseball games and jerky, Mother's Day and crepes, flowers on the porch, frisbee in the park, kids playing outside, and neighbors with their "hello"s as we all go on our daily strolls. So fun!

Yesterday was my longer day of work: supervision and four clients. I'm still hoping and waiting for a response from the place I interviewed at last week. It was a hard interview but I really liked the supervisor and their theoretical perspective. In the meantime there have been some coffee shop dates, website planning, and wishful thinking on my part to get away from the monotony of our daily life for a few days. I didn't realize how disappointing it was to not be able to come see friends in LA this March. Now the desire to catch up with old friends, see a new place in the country, and play in a swimming pool is consuming me. When can we go?!

I guess the ambiguity of being a contractor and/or being under employed is what really consumes me. There is no vacation, there's no real hope for change, there's nothing saying that the next contract won't come for months (also nothing saying we won't still be contracting in another year). When there are houses for sale in the $200-230K price range all over the Portland metro area and a $8K tax credit (if purchased before 11/30/09) it makes it all the harder to just wait and say... ok, God... whenever you want to give us work... however you do it... we trust and follow you. It's torture.

I guess that's the honest assessment of how I'm feeling right now. I thought grad school was supposed to be the hard waiting period and afterward you were supposed to be able to do what you love, work in your field, and (call me crazy) make money. Sigh. Turns out this is a waiting period too. Wait for a job... wait for a family... wait for a dog... wait to visit friends... wait.

just another Thursday

2009-05-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

8am wake up and cuddle
9am shower
10am coffee with two friends from WPC
12pm office time next door (catch up on some paperwork), I love that it's only a step away
3pm time for another haircut! I will post pics later this week
5pm see clients for a few hours
8pm Thursday night TV starts, it's very likely that Donovan will listen from the office and I will be in the living room... the blessing/curse of having an at home office (he's STILL going on that "10 hour project" from last week, I hope he gets paid for his hours!)

It's so strange to have my day flip flopped, doing work at night and personal stuff during the day. There's something in me that says "this isn't productive!" even though it is. I wonder if that will ever go away.

Coffeehouse 5

2009-05-04T09:42:00.001-07:00

We went to NoPo yesterday, checked out another coffee shop on the espresso map. They use Cafe Vita beans there, reminds me so much of Seattle and Lindsey. I loved the day yesterday. It reminded me of the last two years and exploring around LA with Don. We found a farmer's market and basked in the sunshine on a little hill and listened to live music with little kiddos running around. We drove the neighborhoods of N, NE, and SE looking at houses and found two good finds in Ladd's for around $260K asking price. We even found ourselves in the Pearl eating at a veggie burrito place and eventually in SW for church in the evening. We were laughing about how many spots in the Portland area we could hit in one day! It was all spontaneous (besides going to get coffee) and really fun. I want to do it again!

ladies day!

2009-05-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

This weekend I met up with my mom, her friend Rose, and her daughter Tara for brunch at Francis. Tara and I have known each other our whole lives, our mom's met when they were pregnant with us when they were taking their children (Stephanie and Ty) to pre school. It was so wonderful to enjoy conversation with these women this Saturday, it takes no time before I feel that we are back to where we were years ago just chatting away. We enjoyed a really yummy brunch and walked almost all of Alberta St looking at the shops. I had no idea that so many local designers sold their clothing and jewelry on Alberta St. It's really a great place for creative finds.

In other news, Donovan has been working on a project all weekend and has been slaving away making sure everything gets done. What originally was only a 10 hour project is still going... he worked on it all day Friday, Saturday, and now is still in there as of Sunday morning. I'm quite sure he has exceeded those 10 hours, but still needs to do some more work. I realized that I don't like contracting as much as I thought I did... there is a vacillation between no work at all and tons of work with no respect for plans or weather or doing things in metered moderation.

Good news: I can breathe out of both nostrils and have started running again. I'm so glad the worst is over with my sinus infection. I sleep better now too now that my sinuses aren't plugged. Actually, the scariest thing of all is to brush your teeth when your sinuses are plugged, it's like holding your breath! Along with starting my daily runs again I am counting calories. I'm such an old lady! I realized that I am gaining weight again and this may be the only way to maintain or lose weight so I am buckling down and doing it. For now I have a moderate amount of calories each day, so it's not likely that I am going to lose weight soon. The good news is I won't keep gaining it. I'm still learning how to count things and it has brought to my attention what things really are good for you and what things are not. If this lesson brings nothing but awareness about what I put in my body I still will have learned a lot. I'm planning on running one or two half marathons this June/July so I am slowly starting my training for that.

As far as my work goes, I am putting together a website with Donovan and it is coming into its final stages of completion. We have already purchased the domain. I also talked with a Portland LMFT who wants me to start seeing individual clients at his offices and collaborating with him. So we'll see how that goes. It is good to feel like I am feeling more comfortable with my schedule and getting into a stride... knowing more what my week is going to look like and how I am going to manage things.

Little things still crop up regarding my sadness and loss that my dad is gone. Today I saw a picture of our whole family on the day that I was born, my dad smiling over me. That one always gets to me. He is so happy. His favorite show will come on, or something funny will happen that I want to tell him, or I'll have a question to ask him or a favor that I want to request from him. The feeling that comes up when I realize that can't happen because he's gone now is strange and undescribable. Maybe I feel like that hope for connection with him goes into oblivion. It's definately something I'm still learning to work through.

Happy Sunday friends!

beach

2009-04-30T08:19:00.001-07:00

Fun times with Steph, Scotty, and Don.

my sinuses own me

2009-04-23T08:27:00.001-07:00

Since Monday I have been feeling the allergy blues. Lewis, are you out there? Do you feel me on this one? Ugh, it's terrible. It makes me want to run to the beach. I think we're going to wait until tomorrow though so we can be there when the sun is shining.

Yesterday was the worst. It all caught up with me. I didn't do anything productive after 2pm. Donovan made dinner, cleaned the house, took care of me, and even made rhubarb pie before our strawberries went bad. Isn't he the best? I got to eat rhubarb pie in bed, it was fun. Although I would rather have a new and not congested head so I can go run and play and bike. I think it's the perfect storm of my bad allergies, reintroduction after two springs of living in LA where my allergies were better, and current stress (including my earlier in the week battle with the dog hair in the car, bad idea!).

I found this helpful website to let me know which days are worst than others for allergen pollutants. You can click on your state and enter your zip code and it's like a weather page only for allergens (from low to high rating for the day). I also heard about sublingual immunotherapy for the first time. I'm interested in learning more and possibly going to a naturopathic physician since medications have never worked well for me and the neti pot was already a wonderful introduction into natural medical remedies for my allergies. Finally, this article is the one that really helped me last night feel like there are still options that I can try so that I don't have to be in bed until summer comes. I hope this is of some use to allergy sufferers out there. (As a side note: Lewy, what are you going to do on the PCT if you have allergy problems?!)

I think through living in Portland and working in the "wellness" sector I am becoming more aware of eastern medicine, natural remidies, and better eating habits. Can you tell I kinda love Portland? It breaks my heart to think that many people like me end up moving away because this is one of the worst places in the nation for allergy sufferers. I don't want to live in a nearby coastal city, I want to live here.

busy weekend

2009-04-22T17:27:00.000-07:00

My dear sweet friend Lindsey who I met in Uganda came to visit this weekend. We had so much fun and time went by so fast. Here are a few of my artsy pics (I'm getting more and more into photo apps on my iPhone) from our time together. Two days weren't enough for long talks, bike rides, exploring the city, slow walks, and many consumed coffees... although we do similar things every time we're together. Now I owe her a trip to Seattle, which I don't mind at all. I'm hoping to go visit sometime this summer before she leaves for a year long mission trip to Uganda.

The day that she left I also hosted 12 ladies at my house for a lingerie party for my friend Kari. Kari is such a wonderful woman and it was so good to get together and celebrate her life and her future years with Peter, who I love. It was so good for me to see many ladies who I went to college with and catch up. Here are couple pictures I captured in the midst of being a busy hostess...

april happenings

2009-04-15T08:03:00.000-07:00

Wow, spring is going by fast. I have a back log of some great pictures and memories to share with my blogging community. I hope you enjoy it. Today will be mostly the last two weeks of fun family and church things that we have been able to do, most of it in some amazing weather!

**

My dad worked for PGE for over 30 years. As a gift to us surviving women my dad's work partner gave us sweatshirts of the recent storm (the storm which kept him busy Christmas day 2008). It's pretty funny really because he had so many of these cheesy PGE storm memorabilia things around the house: mugs, shirts, etc. This is us pictured on the day we divided his stuff wearing the sweatshirts and his old PGE glasses (just for fun).
One day my mom, Melissa, Don and I went to the mountain to get in a beautiful day of skiing. It was so refreshing and reminded me why I love living here. Don learned how to ski in just one day and did such a great job on my dad's skis. Way to go Don!

We have a tradition with Rod and his family (wife and three kiddos) to go on adventures around the Portland area. A couple weeks ago we went to the Tulip Farm and had a really fun time. Kids can be entertained by the simplest things like water in a bucket. I love it! This is Kate, she is such a sweet girl.
A few days ago Steph and Scotty invited us to go to the Japanese Gardens. There was a special event and they got us on the guest list with free tickets. The gardens look so beautiful now in the spring and we enjoyed seeing them, meeting their friends, walking in the gardens and eating Japanese food and trying some good sake!

Most weeks we go to Small Group on Wednesdays and see our lovely big and little friends from one of our two church communities. This is Ella, she's such a happy girl.
And JJ, her brother. We are great friends! I have never seen such an extroverted child, and that's a lot coming from me.
On Easter we visited our second church home because family plans and our new nightly church schedule conflicted with each other. So we went to the Japanese International Baptist Church and we helped the two year olds with their egg hunt after the service. They were so confused, it was so cute! This is Cedo with his egg finds: green tea and sushi plastic toys. How fun!

I love the blossoms in Portland this time of year. There are some really interesting colors. Donovan and I continue to be amazed and we realize that we have only been living here since the trees have been bare. So we are always finding new colors and being touristy and taking pictures. It's so funny!

Happy Spring!

new space

2009-04-14T09:06:00.001-07:00

Our offices were recently remodeled. Now that the construction is done it is so nice to be able to enjoy having twice as much space as we had before. Here is a picture of the lobby area. I love the new office that I use twice a week, lots of natural light. There is a bit more sound (car noise mostly) then before but I think the light makes it worth it.

I am so blessed to work where I do... it's a beautiful part of town and my favorite coffee shop is the next door down! Also, it has been really nice to simply pay rent and watch all of this beautiful work unfold. The owner is so talented at coordinating complicated schedules and decorating!

if i was a twitterer

2009-04-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

if I was a twitterer yesterday I would have said...

9am... nothing is quite as sad as going to GI Joes and hearing all the little girls scream "daaad!"
10am... my phone was lost but now its found (the culprit? the bottom of my purse)
11am ... the star my barista made in my hemp vanilla latte if almost as fabulous as the drink itself
11:30am... Andrea warms my heart and makes me enjoy myself more
12:30pm ... tulip trees are magical, almost a reason in themselves to live in Portland
1pm ... white girls love boba too
1:30pm ... probably the weirdest text I've ever sent: "what size of underwear do you wear?" (context: I was planning a close friend's lingerie shower)
2pm... sometimes real estate agents suck
2:30... should I buy the creepy green glass vase with a beautiful shape from the vintage furniture store or not?
3pm ... why do I live so far away from SE Portland?! I want to explore vintage stores all day!
4pm.... early Israeli dinner with my honey, yum!
5pm... Israeli is fattening, I'm off for a bike ride and frisbee with Don
5:30pm... spring is glorious
6pm... we still have one hour of sunlight left! (little did I know it's really 2 more hours now!)
7pm... cheap pub theater, gelato, or painting a wall tonight? hmmm.
8pm.... off the Joanne's then Gelato
10pm.... I love my husband. And I love my city.
12pm... good night fellow insomniacs

mess

2009-04-07T10:03:00.001-07:00

Hey friends,

So with the weather being amazing I have been skiing, playing Frisbee, running, happy hour-ing and cooking. Too busy to even clean my own house and get chores done. Plus today is the first day my computer is back to life. I dumped a big glass of water on it a few days ago and it needed to dry out, oops! So this is a short post to say I will spend the day cleaning and doing chores and hopefully have some pics up soon of my new home decor finds!

home-y

2009-04-03T10:20:00.000-07:00

Today I considered either going up skiing by myself (can't find any to join me) or going on a home decorating adventure. Although Ikea and thrift stores can be pretty scary (I'll bring my baby wipes) I thought skiing alone may be a bit too risky, so I chose a decorating adventure. Donovan and I decided on $200 as my spending limit for the day. I'll have to let you know what treasures I find and post some pics after my journey today. I'm having a bridal shower for 30 guests in two weeks and it has motivated me into getting this place looking a bit nicer! Wish me luck!

hemp milk

2009-04-02T08:02:00.000-07:00

I found a lovely local coffee shop next door to my work. The barista is from the East Coast and although it took him a while to warm up to me, I think he enjoys talking to me now. We got on the subject of soy milk vs hemp milk after he introduced hemp milk to me and I loved it. On his suggestion I did some research online about soy milk and discovered that it is really not so healthy for you. I was surprised! Soy milk may increase heart disease, cancer, and osteoperosis and decrease one's sex drive, yikes! For all of you that know me personally may know that I can't drink milk because of my recently developed lactose intolerance (it's actually been about 4 years now, wow!).
Hemp milk has a more balanced ratio of oils as seen on the chart at the bottom of this page: http://www.worldpantry.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ExecMacro/livingharvest/hemp101.d2w/report.
So after some research and some very superior hemp vanilla lattes (to my normal soy vanilla lattes) at my local coffee shop I went on a hunt for my own hemp milk at home. I didn't find it at Trader Joe's or Safeway so I went online and found out that a lot of natural food stores hold it. I ended up buying chocolate and original, although I haven't opened the chocolate one yet, so I'll have to let you all know how that goes. It's really good, and actually a nice change because it is not as thick and creamy as soy and much more like cow's milk in consistency and taste (according to someone who hasn't drank a glass of milk in a long long time).
I thought I would bring this to the attention to my blogging community because it was something new that I learned and I know so many of us consume soy on a regular basis. Here are a few more websites that might be helpful to learn about soy and other alternatives to milk:

Mercola
Healing Daily
The Healing Crow

The only problem that I'm having is that very few coffee shops in the Portland area provide hemp, the only one I've found so far is this local coffee shop I've been speaking of: Seven Virtues. Yes, even the famous-but-overhyped Stumptown does not offer hemp yet.

some of our favorite things

2009-03-31T09:16:00.000-07:00

One fun thing about living 10 minutes from my sister Steph and her hubby is that we can do fun things together even on week nights because we are all so close by. When we get together we always do one (or more) of our four favorite things: play games, eat sushi, watch The Biggest Loser, and enjoy spirits :) A great evening involves all of the above and an excellent evening includes my favorite activity of all: eating food that my brother-in-law prepares. He is the best cook I have ever known.
Yesterday Donovan got to go to Monday's sushi happy hour with both of them where all of the sushi is $1 or $1.50 (and it's all the same food!). Too bad I work every Monday night. Booo. But tonight is the biggest loser so that will make up for lost family time (although I'm still hungry for some good cheap sushi!).
Above is a picture of them last Friday at the happy hour we went to at the Raccoon Lodge. They have a Happy Hour Portland book and we have gone to about 7 happy hours since October with them. So fun! Raccoon is good for their Raspberry beer and nachos!

goodbye again

2009-03-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my sisters and I went over to my mom's house with our husbands and divided my dad's things. It was like a whole new wave of sadness crept over me. I love seeing my family but now there always seems to be something bitter attached to our meetings. The next time we meet will be Easter, another celebration yet another reason to cry: our first holiday without all of us there. I was so so tired when I got home last night around 9pm and just collapsed on the couch. It surprised me that it hit me so hard, as the last week I have felt more at peace and more able to live daily life without being interrupted by feeling down, crying, or being easily distracted from tasks (all symptoms I experienced very heavily the first few days and weeks). Oddly, yesterday was the first month anniversary of his death... we didn't plan it on purpose to be that way though. Things that get me through: watching movies about cancer and/or grief, taking it slow throughout the day and forgiving myself if I can't be productive, crying, being honest with those who are close to me, and just telling myself to take it slow and that it will hurt for a long long time.

2009-03-21T07:56:00.000-07:00

On Saint Patty's Day my sis and I went to Split and tried out their happy hour. It was great! Then we did had to stop by McMennimen's and have a Ruby together (an amber they make there). We ended off the day with games and Biggest Loser. I love my sis!

This week my private practice shrank to 5 clients. Wow! This is my first real ebb with my client load and it made me really start reevaluating how to make my private practice an effective business. This is something that doesn't come natural to me so I started reading a book on building your private practice and I'm meting with a Fuller Alum group on the web and talking with them about private practice stuff once a month. They're cool people!

In the midst of all of this I am communicating with the Board of Oregon and almost fully done with my application to be an intern in Oregon. It takes a while, but during this time I am still accruing hours (even though I don't have my number yet).

All of that coincided with a call from my potential employer at the eating disorder clinic saying they found someone else. I was very upset at this news and felt like his preemptive offer for the job was unkind in light of the fact that he changed his mind and had very little good reasoning for it.

So... on Friday I took a mental break from all therapy/job search/intern paperwork/stress related things and visited Stephanie's Japanese classroom. I love being there and working hard. Yesterday I graded papers and cleaned the classroom again. It is such concrete work and it feels like a job well done at the end of the day. Therapy is so often ambiguous and hard to quantify... when is work ever "done"? Although I've been thinking about more seriously implementing research into my practice (maybe a pre and post therapy eval?) I haven't actually done it yet.

Steph joined Autumn (my friend from high school who I haven't seen in years) and I to Pambiche for Friday happy hour and had great Cuban food. We stayed away from the beer this time though because we had some driving to do... we went to the Oregon State Dance Competition! Steph grew up in a dance family and although she didn't compete in high school she had lots of fun watching again. Autumn and I danced together and we reminisced about the year and about some of the traumatising things dancers go through (i.e. helmet hair, yelling from the coaches, pressure to be thin, etc). It was a really fun night. Today they compete again and they get placement awards for the year. I think Lake Oswego just might get first place! They were so good.

mt angel concert, dog fun and more

2009-03-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

We went to watch Donovan's mom perform at the Mt Angel church this weekend. It's set in a rural area of Oregon between Salem and Portland. The cathedral was so beautiful and the singing was so good it relaxed me to the point of sleeping for a short moment. The music was interpreted into English in our booklet and it was very meaningful theology which I found helpful to contemplate on during this season. My mom is one of the best singers too :) Here are some pictures of the building, my in-laws, and the beautiful sky that day.
The only other things we really did last weekend were relax, go to a new coffee shop in SE Portland, and help my mom around her house with some chores. Earlier in the week my mom and I took the sunny day as an opportunity to take both of the dogs on a long walk, it was really fun. Even though the walk was only a five minute drive from my mom's house I had never done it before (a part of it but not the whole thing). I took pictures of them on the way there, they are so cute! My little babies! I really enjoy being a dog aunt... I don't have to do any of the hard stuff and get to enjoy them from time to time. Sometimes when they get out of control I say "boys and girls!" or "ladies and gentlemen!"... Dimen is our first girl dog in a long time so it's fun to find new names for her. I call her "sister" a lot lately and she has totally taken to it and responds when I use it.

The weekend before we went to the United States Barista Championship and watched the top three baristas compete and awards ceremony. This is my poloroid camera application.

I'm looking forward to this evening... Melissa, Steph and I have a girl date planned... this time it's in Lake Oswego. Fun!

jobs

2009-03-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

I interviewed at two places: one a community based clinic the other an eating disorder clinic. I called the owner of the eating disorder clinic and am talking with him more about the possibility of working together. He hasn't returned my call yet, so it's all speculation at this point. I'll let you all know what comes of it!

japanese!

2009-03-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

My sis is a Japanese teacher. Today I visited her in her classroom to give some sister-love and see what she does every day. I was a good Teacher's Assistant.

-I was introduced to the Japanese II class and they asked me questions in Japanese. Of course, my sis had to feed me the answers ("I'm 25 years old" in Japanese) but she said I did really good! There are 33 kids in her Japanese II class, it's so crazy full!
-I helped finish a poster project that she needed done by tomorrow. It's been a while since I did high school things like make posters... about 7 years!
-Steph and I went out to lunch at Taco Del Mar. It definitely felt like high school when we had to take our half eaten food to go and run so we weren't late to class. Lol.
-I was introduced to the Japanese I class and for some reason had a harder time saying that "we went out to Taco Del Mar for lunch by car" than how old I was. Maybe her compliments got to my head :)
-I cleaned the classroom and realized how high schoolers are still into doodling on tables... crazy kids!
-Our last five minutes of class was me talking about my trip to Japan in 2004 and letting them ask questions. It was fun! I can't believe it's been 5 years since then, I'm getting old.

That was my fun and random day. It all started with a text from me to my sis: "Do you want a TA for the day?"

In other news, I'm thinking more seriously about the two interviews that I did before my father died and thinking about committing to one of them. We'll see how that goes!

moving beyond death

2009-03-10T08:47:00.001-07:00

As many of you know my father died last week. My trip to Pasadena was canceled and we tired ourselves everyday with funeral plans and sleepless nights. To track my emotional process through this all I have been writing letters to my father. In an effort to stay connected with my blogging family I will post one of these letters from a few days ago. I am also planning on sharing other thoughts about my dad's life, my relationship to him, and my process of moving through grief.

I have been overwhelmingly welcomed to talk and to cry with family and friends and in many ways this has been a bonding and a community experience... the kind I have been looking for ever since I moved back to Portland and felt a real loss of my Pasadena community. It's tragic that it happened in that way, but I am so glad for the love and support I have. There are moments in these letters where I feel so alone, but I want my blogging community to know that things are okay and even though I may feel lonely I know I am not alone.

*
March 7, 09

Dad,

It feels like it’s been a million years and it has only been one week. We were so busy answering phone calls, eating the gifts people shared, making song decisions, and doing everything with half of our brain present that the week was both a blur and a long, long continuous moment... a moment scattered with tears and hugs and memories. The closer we got to the day of the funeral the least I wanted it to come. I kept thinking to myself, how could I possibly wake up the day after your funeral? What would I do? How could I go to work? Or get out of bed? Or eat? The day after... it seemed too real, too final, too over. As long as I was busy making plans for the funeral it was all still real... we were all still aware of your death, of the unfairness and shock of it all, of the pain that we felt because you were gone. But the day after there would be no more calls, there would be no more flowers, and even worse, the flowers we had would start to die. I just couldn’t bear it.

The morning of your funeral I woke up and my bones felt old and heavy. I startled awake at 6am and didn’t fall back asleep.... but for a long time I just lay there and couldn’t move. I kept thinking about strange things and my mind was wandering. It was better than the previous few days where I would find anything and everything to do until the wee hours of the morning when I crashed with fatigue. One night I lie awake next to Donovan’s sleeping body and listened to every breath, anxious that he would not take the next one. It helped me the day before the funeral to be busy getting my hair done and buying a nice dress. I’m sure had you seen me in this dress you would have thought that I looked very pretty but you wouldn’t have had the nerve to tell me so.

Somehow, God only knows, I found myself walking down my front steps, fully dressed at 8:30am ready for the day. The car ride was so quiet. It was like the night that you died... that long terrible car ride from my house to yours. It’s plenty long enough to think about millions of terrible things. I passed by the church on the way to mom’s house and cried. I thought how ironic it is that you almost died on the Tualatin River (the pre-Easter car accident when the drunk lady hit you) and now you are here at the church, a pile of ashes in an urn. It’s hard to reconcile it all. Just last week we were talking together, laughing together, and I was worried about forgetting to call Molly and Al for you. Now you are gone. In that way it seems so sudden and so unexpected. I realize that this doesn’t make sense because in some ways we had months and years to know that you would be gone soon, but it doesn’t mean I could have known how it would feel to be in my twenties and to be without a father.

I remember small bits of that day. It’s all blurry though. I was in the rain and it didn’t matter. I was in the limo and I was laughing and taking pictures. The limo pulled up and we saw the bucket trucks all sitting there. It was too much to bear to see your bucket low and bent over and the others as high as they could go. I remember holding Doug Cutler and crying... I remember that feeling that I was comforting him with my hug more than the other way around. I remember crying into my hanky. I remember thinking it is all to formal, how the Pastors should have to stop and just cry for a while for it all to feel right, but they didn’t. I remember thinking how much you would have liked to be there, to see Gina and Ken, to see Paul and Dale, to see Jim and Helen, to see people from all over the place hugging and smiling and crying. I kept thinking about how you always talked to the one who was left out and so I talked with Jim and with Helen and with Paul and with Grandma because I know you would have tried too. I remember “Unforgettable” and totally loosing it when I heard the song, I remember the smell of PGE jackets and how comforting it was, I remember sad and understanding eyes. I was so hungry afterwards because I couldn’t eat all morning. I remember eating and thinking that you would have loved the idea of feeding all of your family and friends, and having them all sit down together and have you take the tab. I’m sure you would not have wanted to be the focus of the day. Surely you would have asked others how they were. Some at the funeral mentioned that about you; I wonder if that was actually your greatest fault.

to my bff

2009-02-24T21:40:00.001-08:00

25 years ago I met you... kinda
you were in the womb and even if you were already born, I probably couldn't see you because newborns don't really see that far.
I remember your first house
and dancing to 80s tapes hours on end
and printing out long banners on your way cool computer that had super pixelated images
and your dad's firetruck toy
and the stairs.
I thought it was so exciting to walk through your new house as it was being built
and I remember walking up the stairs after it had been framed and seeing your room
little did I know that we would spend many nights there
laughing together
watching movies
and talking about who knows what little girls talk about.
just that alone would be enough to be forever grateful to you,
but the story didn't end there.
we danced
and we danced
and we danced
and we grew together
there were different things too,
there were different schools
and different friends
and different boys
but in the end I always knew you were there
I always knew we could laugh about what we used to think was cool
and remember things about each other that maybe no one else in the world knew
maybe we didn't even remember them about ourselves.
and the story still continues...
to be back together in the same city
and to learn more about you as a woman and a life long friend
is such a beautiful thing
I'm forever grateful for your friendship
for Paula Abdul and too much blush
for tap shoes and being awkward tweens
for long days at competitions
for laughs and memories
for moving into adulthood
for sushi and talks about the bigger things in life
and for whatever the future brings.
You are such a sweet and precious friend
and no one in the world can replace those things.
So happy 25 to us!

pasadena

2009-02-24T07:13:00.001-08:00

We're going to Pasadena for a few days in March! Yes... I'm SOOOO excited! I can't wait!

Chinese Gardens

2009-02-22T08:37:00.001-08:00

Saturday Don and I went to the Chinese Gardens for the first time. It was a beautiful day and we had so much fun with their 3 kiddos. We ate at an awesome place in Chinatown, Old Town Pizza, and walked a big area of the east and west waterfront that I had never been to before. We had a fun afternoon! We have so much fun playing with the kids but when we get home we always enjoy the silence :)

termination and technology

2009-02-22T08:04:00.000-08:00

Donovan is done with his work at APU! Yea! Thank you so much, love. You have provided for our family and I am so grateful. We celebrated at Siam Society, yum! I had beef curry and chocolate cake with cardamom ice cream (oh no, lactose!).

The next day I took a picture of Don because I thought it was pretty funny that Don texted Jon an email from his iPhone while sitting in front of three macs! The third one is the new one Don bought himself last week because he has to return his old one to APU now. We are far too techy!

(I'll add a pic later... it's on Don's phone)

recent fun

2009-02-19T12:41:00.000-08:00

Per Ruby's request, here are some random things we've been doing lately (with pics!)...
above is my best Yahtzee score card... ahh!!!
Below is Donovan's meal "The Don" at a breakfast shop in SE Portland. We've been going once a month to try new breakfast spots with Scotty and Steph (my sis)... so fun!

A nutria sighting at the local park (I thought Lewis would like this). It was so used to humans!
Don and I helped the Smith's babysit one day for their church friends, it was really fun! Everyone thought Ella was my baby. Lol.
Earlier this week my dad took me out in his new hotrod to sushi, my fav! We've been going to sushi a lot with him, I guess it's our new little thing. He just got this new hotrod, cute, huh?
Don't forget to check my blog posting below, I did two today.

swim time

2009-02-19T12:23:00.000-08:00

As the warm weather approaches I've started thinking about what swimsuit I would feel is age appropriate for someone like me. I want a one piece but I don't want to look like a grandma. I have to give a few places some credit... they are trying to make one pieces for younger people these days, although many still look distorted in the model's teeny bodies with enhanced areas and it's hard to tell what it would really look like on me. So I have gathered my favorites (as I did in 08 for bridesmaid hair ideas) to get a consensus from friends. What do you think? Should I buy my first one piece this year? Which one do you like?

I'm a sucker for the 1950s style swimdress (the red one) but I don't know if it would look good on me and it's the most expensive of all, why does that always happen?

I'm realizing that this is just one of the many "adult" things I am doing for the first time now that I'm 25. I've started a good workout regimen, I'm looking at one pieces, and I got really practical gifts... little reminders that 25 is a little bit different of a year for me.

spring day!

2009-02-18T14:44:00.001-08:00

It's a beautiful sunny day and I love it! It inspired me to run 7 miles, go to my fav coffee shop (Chuck's) and work from my new office... the porch! I'm wearing one of my new fun shirts today because I went to an interview for an externship site.
The view

birthday pictures

2009-02-17T18:57:00.001-08:00

Thanks for being such a partier Don, even though you were sick :(

"4 candles representing 5 years each, plus the cake which equals five!" -my mom
the spread, yum yum!
Hershey getting a good sniff of the cornbread. He loves his bread! And check out what I meant by a "cluster"... that's what's on my plate!

Thanks for giving me life and giving me a feast for my birthday mom and dad!

birthday

2009-02-15T09:17:00.000-08:00

On my birthday I woke up to Snoqualmie pancakes made by my husband yum! My gift to myself that day was to take a break from my private practice stuff and do some things for myself: go for a long run, take a bath, wear fancy clothes. Then Don surprised me with two tickets to go skiing and beautiful flowers when he got home! He was pretty sick all weekend so the fact that he was able to go shopping and celebrate with me in some small ways was a really amazing gift in itself. We did take it slow for much of the weekend though, and fortunately he's feeling somewhat better at this point. I think it's because he's a faithful Neti Pot user now!
Don and I had so much fun at my birthday party. My parents had us over. It was a feast! That alone was such a nice birthday present! My dad made wild sockeye salmon (there was a whole fish there!), a crab cluster for everyone, and prepared the coconut prawns (I got to deep fry them, my specialty). My mom made a huge salad, cornbread, chocolate covered strawberries, and chocolate cake. I was so full! In honor of my 25th birthday I got some real grown up presents. I got an amazing knife from my chef brother-in-law and sis, an air filtration system from my parents, and a coffee gift certificate from my other siblings. And now I am a quarter century.
For V-day I took my honey to the Mac Store to spend his Christmas money and out to Chipotle, his fav. Then he took me to buy some clothes, it was fun! He ended up falling asleep in the car, but in the end he met me in the dressing room and helped me pick out a few things. We compromise, as narcolepsy is not always the most romantic of diseases. I had fun! Afterwards we came home for a big meal and watched depressing love movies on tv... wow, Valentine's day is such an interesting American tradition. You should have seen all of those crazy ladies at Victoria's Secret!
Of course, I had to let Donovan know that I hate sharing my birthday weekend with every other woman in America. We had a dinner gift certificate but we couldn't use it because Don didn't want to weather the storm of Valentine's day couples at the restaurant. Maybe later this weekend we'll get to go. But all in all it was super fun. It reminded me of friends that I've spent past birthdays with (Jeannie, Jackie, Megan, Hee Jung, Lauren, George, and Daniel) and made me miss them. It also reminded me of how they were my family when I didn't get to see my family and how sweet they all were to me every day, not just on my birthday. I miss you all lots. We are getting much closer to being able to visit Pasadena soon, yea!

time to celebrate!

2009-02-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

Donovan went to talk with another Filemaker guy in the Portland area this afternoon. Matt, the guy he met today, has presented at the annual developer's conference and Don really respects his work. Presenters are known for being at the top of the field and well seasoned, not just any old joe schmo. It was all really surprising because this morning we were at Kaiser picking up Ritalin for Donovan and Matt called and asked if he wanted to meet him for lunch at 12:30pm. I was a little jealous because they got to have lunch at a nice hotel in downtown Portland. But I do have to remember that there is a bigger picture, and that it is good to have a husband who is internally motivated to do work that just so happens to be in a lucrative field. Maybe someday I'll eat at a downtown hotel for lunch too. Lol.

Donovan had talked to another developer (Kent) in the area last week who has his own business and wanted to hire him as a contractor to help with some of his projects. We were excited at Kent's offer but realized there were a lot of issues with that situation, for example who knows if he would get enough or any hours on the clock in the future if the work slowed down. But we were so happy at the same time because that meant that Don could stay in his field of choice and we could at least keep afloat for a while financially.

I was excited to get Donovan's call a few minutes ago saying that Matt was really impressed with Donovan's work. I'm not surprised because Donovan is an intense researcher and learner and spent about 7 months using every spare moment he had to devote to preparing his demo file to show to potential employers. It feels so rewarding to see other people look at it and be really impressed. I feel so proud when I see him with a smile all over his face and he realizes that people are competing for his time and excited that he is in the Portland area. I know that he is an awesome worker and devotes himself to what he does and is has great communication skills, but when others say that to him I think it is so different than hearing it from me and so rewarding for him.

So, Donovan said that Matt and Kent talked together and they want to set up a way to "share" Donovan. By share they mean setting up a pay system through one person's business (like Kent's for example, his business is called 3rd Rock) and then having all three companies collaboratively give him projects to work on and share his clock hours between the businesses. It's really exciting because Donovan will get to work with people he has admired for the last year, and get to know how different businesses work. Of course, we are still trying to figure out how we will get benefits (as he will be a contractor still and I am be self-employed), but that is such a small worry for me right now compared to how excited I am for Donovan.

Isn't he so great?! I'm so glad other people are getting to see his work finally. Don said that Matt was really impressed with his work just as Kent was and said "this is big league stuff." How great!

evergreen

2009-02-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

So we're looking for churches still and I think we found one that we both want to commit to.... we're still talking about it. What I like about it is that it is small, they aren't into production but about growing as a community and keeping things simple, and that they are authentic people who really try to get to know new people. Of course, I really miss Mountainside, our money group, the kids there, Josh, and being supported by people in that community, especially regarding my work as a therapist. Yet, this place has a lot of things that I didn't know could exist in churches. They even have a community mental health clinic, although small, it is impressive that they are making that happen as a small church body and recognizing the mental health needs of the city and church.
The funny thing is, the church meets in two well known pubs in the Portland area. They are looking to expand to yet another site (3 church bodies now, to keep the communities small enough so everyone knows everyone's name) and the newer one is going to be out closer to where we live, which is great. Although, it is fun to be in the Pearl district once a week and stop for coffee (on the weeks we have the funds to). I think it's more important for me to have a place that I don't have to commute really far to get to though... driving a long way to church doesn't seem authentic to me (a long drive to church to see people that you never see the rest of the week??).
Today we talked about bodies and what we learn about our bodies from the culture and from churches/scripture/God. I felt really free to exercise because it is good for me, and to eat well because it is caring for this body that belongs to God, and to want those things not because I will be accepted by the world but rather because I am already accepted and because I want to live long and continue to grow and share God's love with others.

dog sitting

2009-02-05T15:10:00.000-08:00

Today I dog sat for my sister while she and her husband are out of town. I'm coming over tomorrow too.

Hershey loves to cuddle and play ball and go for walks, but he just turned 9, omg... I can't believe it! I remember when he was just weeks old and as small as a little teddy bear. He is so quirky. Today he was begging, as usual, and tooted and it came out really loud and he was surprised to hear it and turned around. Sometimes I wonder what's going on in his head. Like was he thinking "who was that?!" I like to think he was.

He's lost a lot of hearing in his old age. But one thing is for sure he still has a passion for eating, peeing on every bush he sees, going on walks, and sleeping. It's just that he does quite a bit more sleeping these days.

Yahtzee

2009-02-04T15:08:00.001-08:00

Big news, guys. I played Yahtzee on Sunday while the fam was watching the Superbowl with my mom, sis, and brother in law. You all know that there is a big rivalry in my family and I've always called myself #2... my oldest sister has held the highest score for all of our family's history... her current high score is 470 (about). This requires three Yahtzees in one game, a bonus on top and some excellent scoring all around. Well, great news, I had an awesome game on Sunday and got 529! Holy cow! One of my lifetime achievements (breaking 500) is achieved! Who says being underemployed can't be fulfilling and entertaining?

Although, it kinda takes away the excitement of playing this week, what are the chances that I beat that?!

good news

2009-02-01T22:03:00.001-08:00

The superbowl was entertaining for the first time (not just the commercials, the game), and I really watched. More good news: I consumed many good tasting things. Bacon wrapped dates, hummus and hot bread, yummy chocolate chip peanut butter cookies, and my fav... ribs. Thanks fam.

In other news, emails from friends in Pasadena have made me long for those friendships and feel whatever feeling of "homesickness" you can have when that isn't really home. It's made me really second-guess moving here and my ability to hear God's direction. Right now I'm just looking to others wisdom right now and trusting that when they say employment and a future is in store for us in Portland, that it really is.

My new resolution is to go to bed by 10:30pm now. So I better make that happen tonight.

beauty, jobs, and transition

2009-01-31T19:51:00.000-08:00

We went to the Portland Art Museum today with our friends the Johansen family. The most beautiful things of the day: the foggy morning, the mother/baby 4' tall painting, Native American masks (I have a new appreciation for art when viewing it with three little people!), and Kate falling asleep in her stroller. In addition to this beautiful day with toddlers and kids we roamed the streets of downtown and found ourselves in Stumptown. It was SOOO good. It is defenitely better than Blue Joe, which I was a bit surprised by. Not that they were better but that they were SO much better. I could have done without the echo-y architecture and acrodian music though, come on guys.

Being poor married people like we are I'm greatly looking forward to tomorrow mostly for the food... although partly for the people, partly for the commercials, and definately partly for the doggies.

In other news, I might be an aunt soon. My oldest sister informed me that they're trying. I think it will be fun to be aunty Em, for real this time (not just for baby Hershey).

On the job front, I may get hired as a therapist at my alma matter to start in August. The good news is the opportunity to do supervision (me! at 25 years old!). The bad news is there is no pay.

Donovan also has new job news. He is going to start doing contract work soon for a FileMaker business. Yippee! We're still hoping something more full time pulls through for either one or both of us. But that's a start!

Our transition to Portland still continues... we haven't found a church yet, we really haven't finished decorating our new place, we are still figuring out how we will make money and work in Portland, and we get lost or confused about where we are fairly often (a sign to me that we're still not "settled" yet). Transition is challenging, but good. I'm learning to embrace not knowing all the time and just trying to do our best.

AI vs. therapist

2009-01-30T17:24:00.001-08:00

By the grace of God OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) has an amazing hour of thoughtful psychological discussion that just happens to coincide with my rather long (and late!) drive home from work each night. Last night it was on AI and emotions and I almost flipped a lid. It is normally so intelligent and a perfect transition home from me... it gives me something intelligent and psychologically oriented to be focused on and an in-between-thought to interrupt me from my evening of work to my evening of fun and hanging out. Last night though, I almost had to call those silly people up and give them a piece of my mind.
They were actually having an arguement about how emotions are not of primary importance during decision making and that robots would eventually be able to BE human. The rebuttal was terrible unfortuantely. It just got me thinking about what it is exactly that a therpist does and why the role in our society is important. There is just something about being heard by another, being mirrored by that person, sharing a secret or exposing a fear and being met with warmth and compassion that I think speaks to our humanity. There's nothing that can replace that one on one connection, no way to fabricate it, and for that reason no life if there is no emotion. Maybe on paper it makes sense to someone that robots can eventually become functional human beings in every way... they argued that it would even be able to create things!... but I think in reality we can all see that a hug is undescribable and fills us in some way that nothing else can.
After I was done with my initial shock from hearing this proposterious proposition, I realized how wonderful and beautiful it is to be in the business of helping people to wholeness. It is something that we all need, a friend to walk with us through hard times and to nod in understanding when things don't go perfectly right.

Girls Night at the Game

2009-01-29T08:52:00.003-08:00

I went to a Blazer's game with my big sis last night, it was so fun! We were so close we could hear the players argue with the refs! Melissa commented on my freakish ability to wear coats in hot places. I think my blood got used to being a little hotter while in LA because I felt very comfortable in my coat!

all the ladies

2009-01-29T08:30:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I went to Bob's Red Mill with all the ladies on my mom's side of the family. Bob's was good, lots of healthy food baked fresh there, yum! My mom has 7 siblings (she's the youngest), 6 of which are female. Out of all of those families all are parents and many of my aunts are grandparents too. By some freakish run of events many of those people are also female. I think this is why I spent many of my late teens and early twenties wanting nothing to do with women. I'm sure this also had to do with being raised in a very female nuclear family. Not that there is anything unhealthy or bad about my family but it was my way to process the overload of hormones, drama, and talk-your-ear-off-syndrome. I think I'm over it now. Since I've been back to Portland I've really appreciated the depth of history that I have and how great it is to be alive and all living in the Portland metro area (minus a few who have left over the years).

Not surprisingly our breakfast date at Bob's was SO fun. It was almost like a movie scene how we all trickled in and the servers kept being surprised that more had joined our party. Yes, we're all related! My three cousins, two sisters, mom, three aunts, and cousin by marriage were all there. We talked about babies (of course), finding social work jobs, family stories, current work situations, and the latest things we had done to our homes (my cousin is in the middle of a big mural project at her house). My aunt (the oldest of the family and the current matriarch) had a contest with me to see who could take a more steady picture on my iPhone. It was tough because the lighting was weird but I won! Here's to many more years with these hilarious and wonderful women.

monday blessings

2009-01-26T10:16:00.000-08:00

There are little things to celebrate each day. I am reminded of this as I read through my friends blogs, each a narrative of celebrations... one found joy and blessings from God in the short snowfall this weekend, another juxtaposing the celebration of her son's life to the current economic crisis, another celebrating the inauguration and challenging us to continue to care about the injustices in the world.

I too have much to celebrate. We went to another new church this weekend (this is number 5 on our Portland church journey) and the people there were very loving and accepting. It is so great to see a body of Christ who is embracing outsiders and wholeheartedly welcoming. I don't know if we'll end up going there forever but that Sunday alone was a special encouragement to me. What funny timing! My parents just called me as I was blogging and invited us out to Monday lunch (my dad's weekend is Sunday/Monday and it's become somewhat of a tradition since Don, my mom, and I have such flexible schedules). In tough economic times a big meal paid for each week by the 'rents is a big deal! (I feel like such a college student making such a statement) I can celebrate that Bonny called me this morning and wants to hire me (starting in August) as a volunteer therapist... at least I would get my license sooner even though there is no pay. And I can celebrate being on my porch this morning reveling in the sunshine and cool weather and silence and God's glory. Sometimes I have Sunday night blues (an unfortunate reminder that I don't have a "real job" to wake up for the next day) and it's good to realize that Mondays can surprise us in all these small ways.

Gotta go! I'm off to eat some sushi! YUM!

goodbye 08, hello 09

2009-01-22T14:01:00.001-08:00

Being in Oregon means having a great time with family and friends. We have done many fun things that we said, oh, we will do that next year!, and have really enjoyed seeing more of our old friends and especially my siblings (it's the first time we've all lived in Portland since 1999!)

....in early October my sister Melissa, my dad, and my two favorite dogs in the world went on a spontaneous trip to the gorge. We saw beautiful waterfalls, ate a wonderful meal at none other than Burgerville, and got to play "Oregon tourist"... so fun!

...in October I visited my dear friend at the coast... it was so fun! Kari came and trick-or-treated with us, jan showed me her garden, and i got to help jan take and post pictures of her beautiful home!

Later in November we were able to come again and both Donovan and I said it was such a fun visit but someone we didn't realize we missed so much was Chloe the cat! We were so happy to visit with her again, she's our favorite!

Our friend Kari has been such a joy to be with. I have been able to share unemployment woes with her and spend some quality time with her. On this day we baked cupcakes together. Another day we went to Starbucks to chat and then on to Goodwill (with all the other grandmas in Tigard, lol).

We have had lots of crazy adventures with Steph and Scott too. We went to a Korean market, a Japanese restaurant (so good!), we go to church with them sometimes, we went on a breakfast date, we play Yahtzee and wii with them all the time, and we just generally like these guys, they are so fun!

In my moments of frustration with unemployment (of sorts) I have to remind myself that these are the reasons why I moved to Portland. Professionally it might be falling on a sword, but personally it is so rich and good. My sister Meliss tells me that in five years it will seem so much better because my network will be stronger and things will be moving forward... and I try to listen and believe her.

Since the snow has subsided, a record 18" in Portland!, and 2009 has begun we have continued to have fun with family and friends...

hanging out with the Pratt's is so fun! Kevin is so precious (Don's cousin), he has a crush on me! It was also fun to care for Kent, Don's uncle, because he had rotator cuff (spelling?) surgery and I played nurse for a little while...

...on Alberta St with Steph, Scott, and Don... we saw Scott's fav wine shop, so cute! And they even sell my fav chocolates from Seattle!

...and then last weekend seeing Linds in Olympia. We had McMennamin's (so NW!), Caffe Vita (our Seattle favorite) and some bakery food (the BEST!). Yes, we chatted the whole day away and ate a lot of calories! Linds and I have plans to do more fun girls dates in the near future. Yea! That has to be one of the best parts about being in the NW!

decorating things

2009-01-22T13:33:00.000-08:00

I've been watching some designing shows and getting inspired. I was a little down and out thinking about how we have no money, and even a small budget could go so far in our new place. I don't know if I would more love to paint, refurbish furniture, or get big pieces (like a huge italian dinner table with benches)... that is if there was a budget.

But I didn't let my situation get me down. I brought out old things and arranged them in a new way, and it actually doesn't look bad. In one very manic night I redid the bedroom, did a cute thing on the mantel, and even found a few cute pieces for the bathroom and kitchen. It feels really homey here now! Well, maybe that's a bit too overly excited... it feels *rather* homey here now, which is still a great improvement. The whole night of decorating started because I wanted to find storage for my artifical Christmas tree (the outdoor storage is getting full thanks to the drum cases)... it's hidden under a big sheet and kinda looks like a big table or something.

blue joe coffee, extended

2009-01-22T13:29:00.000-08:00

Today my favorite coffee shop in Lake Oswego closed! By chance I decided to go there early in the day because they have early hours and we got there 30 minutes before they closed the shop permanently. I almost didn't believe the owner when he said "permanently" ... like, forever? He said it all happened really fast and this morning he notified his staff. The business was only bringing in $30,000 a week and the economy is only getting worse... I'm still in shock. It's always full every day. He said he might open up shop in Orange County later in the year (insert frustrated Portlander laugh) I just can't believe it, Blue Joe is gone. As I sipped my last sip of hot soy vanilla latte I thought about how fleeting coffee is and how evasive yet romantic it is to enjoy a moment with a friend over a cup of joe and how that makes it all so wonderful.

I'm trying to find something in Lake Oswego that I can transfer my faithfulness to, but I just haven't found any other spots that we really love. We love the library, so I guess for a while we'll be there more often. That sounds geeky, but it's really the best library in the state and has been for many years, so it's nice. Anyone have any ideas about cool local spots or coffee shops?

I'm thinking about exploring some mom and pop breakfast joints, LO seems to do that rather well. Possibly a bakery or something. I'll let you know what come of my adventures. For now, I will have to make the 20 min drive to Stumptown each time I get desperate.

coffee

2009-01-14T20:10:00.001-08:00

Sorry for my long hiatus from the bloggosphere. It happens to us all at some point I guess... my excuse is just as lame as any other... being a new professional I am trying to learn how I can engage in this medium without lacking integrity as a professional. Yet, I have been longing to keep a connection with LA friends and so because so many of you who follow this are from LA, I thought long and hard and decided what my topic for today would be.

I have been reading a book called God in a Cup. It's really good. Unexpectedly nothing about God and all about coffee. I love both God and coffee a lot so I thought I might see some clashing of the two worlds but really it turned out to be a fabulous book about the world of specialty coffee. Maybe I loved it because my beloved Stumptown was talked about in such depth that I hope to one day shake the CEO's hand (although the guy's business practices can be pretty shady at times, but he has done a lot for the specialty coffee world). It made me realize there is so much I can do to make a better cup of coffee at home myself. The book also inspired me to travel more and opened my eyes to the possibility of discovering things all the way across the world as well as just down the street from me that I never knew about.

For those in LA, you must try Groundworks Coffee and let me know what it is like. Here is a link to their cafe location page http://lacoffee.com/cafes.html
When we were in LA we heard about this place but didn't go thinking that it might not be as cool as our favorite place, Intelligentsia. Intelligentsia is also great and talked about in detail in the book. I encourage you to try both places. Increasingly places like this are popping up, places that buy directly from farmers and roast on site (or locally) within 7-10 days of coffee consumption.

As for me, I will have to wait to try Groundworks until next time I go to LA. But for now, I have a growing list of dreams for my near future:

visit the Stumptown's cafe in the Ace Hotel and drink black coffee
buy freshly roasted coffee at the Annex and try french press coffee at home
go to Seattle to visit Stumptown's new stores and compare this to Caffe Vita
...and of course, blog to document these experiences.

It might take me a while to compete these goals, as my coffee budget is small these days, but I really want to do it, as my knowledge of coffee is growing and my love of the cup of joe remains.

GSC Girls

2008-12-09T08:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went out with my sisters for a girls date. It was really great to hang out together because its often so busy at the events that we see each other at that we don't get to talk much with each other.
First we went to Sabaro, a great sushi place in Sellwood.

It was really fun and the sushi was SO good! Tuna, crab, shrimp, halibut and more! Oooh, I could barely contain myself.

Then we were off to buy each other Christmas gifts because we decided we didn't have enough time to wander the mall aimlessly ending up with a mediocre present. We chatted a lot and several store employees just thought we were so funny. We were fairly successful and I think I thoroughly wore out my two big sisters. I'm excited because we're going to make it a monthly get together. I love my sisters.