My, how the months do fly by!!

Bless me, it has been almost a year since my last blog.

My son A is now in 5th grade and is doing great: does his homework almost every single day without reminding, is doing well in spelling, is reading a chapter book, takes a shower every night!

Life with my wonderful boyfriend continues to evolve: ups and downs, happy times and sad, and we're still together! He is such a good friend to me...I feel really lucky.

Work is busy again after a summer lull. I've created some great momentum that others seem to notice.

I'm growing a few winter vegetables: cauliflower, kale, carrots, beets. My biggest enemy is the snail. The whole garden is surrounded with snail bait.

We had some sad news in August: Blanche went to the great scratching post in the sky while we were on vacation. Poor thing! We found her under a bush after smelling her for over a week! The happy result is that we have Miki now, our 3-legged adopted kitty from Greenhill. Here's a link to a video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auZCYn4lK_U

A shout out to my dear friend who is going through a REALLY tough time right now. Take it day-by-day girl!

Happy Solstice 2008

Happy Solstice one and all! I had a really nice day, considering it's the shortest one of the year: slept in, took a beautiful walk out in nature, wrapped some prezzies and now I'm making chili.

Devin commented the other day, "Pennylicious, I've never seen you so in the Xmas spirit!" And it's true -- I'm not being a humbug this year, but feeling (and acting I hope) grateful for the amazing people with whom I get to celebrate the season.

At cookie exchange this year I felt really good to say, "Nothing is new: I have the same house, the same job and the same wonderful boyfriend!"

I have alot of plans and dreams for the upcoming year and I'll keep working at my goals, no matter the obstacles and challenges!

My love for pancakes started early...

When I was 5 years old - in 1969 - and was in kindergarten, I attended my first sleep-over at a friend's house. I remember there were some scarey ancestors' paintings and unfamiliar sounds in that dark house at night. All the little girls stayed up late telling stories (bloody finger, Mary something, the bride with the black velvet choker.) Classic '60s sleepover!!

In the morning Amy's mom made pancakes for us. Those pancakes were so good, I helped myself to a couple of extras and put them in my overnight bag, where to my horror they were discovered by the other little girls!!! "Ha ha, Penny has pancakes in her bag!!!" Luckily for me the mom must have thought it was funny and sweet and she smoothed the situation over. If she hadn't, I might have been known as Pancake Penny forever...but that would be just fine with me!!

Time to check in

After taking 4 days off for 4th of July, I was thinking to myself, "When will I get another long weekend?...Labor Day? Only 2 months til I get another long weekend." It dawned on me that I was wishing away my summer, and ultimately my life!!

I resolved right there and then to consciously leave work early one day a week to pick up my NINE year-old and do something fun that we could both look forward to. Thus began a really fun summer! I conquered some fears and can now dive off the springboard at the pool. I ran into friends and got caught up with them. My son and I are close to each other!

I've carried on the tradition and am taking time off from work to chaperone some field trips. This is a pic from the salmon hatchery from earlier this month. I learned a lot about my son and his friends and have determined that I LOVE the nine-year-old boy!! I thought A was the only one who was so quirky, but it ends up they all are! Hilarious!!

We're also involved in Cub Scouts and I'm working on projects at A's school. I'm really enjoying being more involved in my son's life. It's easier to do now that I'm all secure in the rest of my life: housing, work, relationship with my sweetie. Hmmmmm.

Fall Creek, anyone??

Eve suggested that we go for a hike this weekend, and I was ready to get out to the country, so we skeedaddled it up Fall Creek for the afternoon. First we checked out the campground where I hope we'll camp this summer. (The pix with D-man are at that camp ground.) The reservoir was empty, so it was eerie with the creek running where a big lake used to be. Then we accidentally, but luckily, headed up-crik and found us a nice trail to hike. I think we did 2 miles total, which was plenty for the kids and for my legs too! Goodness gracious, Oregon is spectacularly beautiful. And all this fantastickness is only 30 mins. away from where we live.

We saw the following birds: bald eagle (I kid you not,) great blue heron, woodpecker.

Look at the lushness of the trees. I can't wait to go back!!

Squirrels, motorcycles and rain

Devin and I rode his Honda 954 to Florence, OR this weekend for the 100th annual Rhododendron Festival!! I was warned to bring plenty of ibuprofen by the Momin8tor, and I'm glad I did, as riding on the back of a crotch-rocket is quite a physical feat!! It rained a little bit on us on the trip there, but being hard-core Oregonians we weren't phased a bit.

Upon arriving at "Windy Haven" on Heceta beach, we were a little taken aback by the dead rat on the kitchen floor.

Now, I must mention here that rats freak me out in the worst way: I've had several nightmares about rats attacking me, I get the heeby-jeebies in a major way if I see one "in the wild" as I did in SF by the Palace of Fine Arts one time with my friend Doc. I'm completely disgusted that anyone can keep one as a pet. It's gross to me that they drag their weiners around and leave urine trails that can be seen by a black light. I do not like rats AT ALL!!

But OK, we saw one and it was dead at the cabin. I got the heeby-jeebies and my night-in-shining-armor cleaned it up. It was relatively clean, with eyes gone (ugh!!) He didn't mention to me at the time, thankfully, that there were maggots on it. Then, as we were looking around D-man said, "Hey, are those rat turds?" and we started looking, and OMG!! the floor was COVERED in rat turds. UGH!!!!! We noticed that mixed with the turds were sunflower seeds, and upon further exploration, we discovered the food source: a 50# bag of bird seed was in the utility room, had been eaten into and was cast all over the floor of the room.

By this time I am pretty much wringing my hands, rocking back and forth with glazed eyes and moaning unintelligibly. You know that type of look that the person has had a nervous breakdown? That was me. I got my act together enough to clean up all the turds and sunflower seeds with a shovel and bucket while D-man did the vacuuming. It cleaned up pretty nice and all appeared safe and rat-free.

Back to my hatred of rats: I knew that chances were very high that this was not one "lone" rat especially with 50# of bird seed and no humans since March. It was late on Friday night, it was raining, we were staying at Windy Haven free of charge. D-man offered to get us a hotel room if I couldn't stay there. What I decided to do was this: there was no way I could stay in a place that was infested with rats, but I could stay somewhere a squirrel had broken in. Like that one time I stayed at a cabin in Maryland that had a dead squirrel in it. OK, the place was crawling with flies from the maggots, but it was a squirrel. Squirrels are cute. They are also rodents, just like rats. I can talk about squirrels, but cannot talk about rats. So D-man and I agreed that "a squirrel" got into the cabin and died.

We got a good night's sleep and on Saturday morning we thought we maybe heard a squirrel in the cabin, but nothing came of it until Saturday night when we definitely heard AT LEAST 2 squirrels doing their squirrelly business. AND D-man saw a squirrel run under the barcalounger. I forgot to mention that the squirrels didn't seem to get to the back of the cabin where the bathroom and master bedroom were located. So I felt safe there until the squirrels weren't scared of us anymore. We plugged a towel under the door to deter any squirrel exploration into our room, I put my earplugs in and got another good night sleep.

In the morning I got up to make coffee and guess what? ANOTHER dead squirrel on the floor in the kitchen. I screamed, "A SQUIRREL!!! Another dead squirrel!!" Crazy, but this one was even more "chawn upon" than the last one and Devin said it was crawling with maggots. (I feel like I'm gonna throw up right now!) But he scooped it up and it seemed kinda like the place smelled better. I feel sorry for Tamara and Carmen who are going next weekend to exterminate the place and clean it...I'm sure there will be AT LEAST one or two more squirrels to clean up even though we removed all the bird seed.

Devin and I had a terrific weekend get away together, despite the squirrels. I drank tons of alcohol to numb myself (not really ;-)

It just goes to show you that when you're in the middle of something it doesn't seem nearly as bad as the telling is!!!

The Clothes Line

We pulled out the clothes line that was left behind when we bought the house, and I just hung my first load on it!! What a satisfying feeling: to be using the energy of my body and the sun to get a job done!! The weather is overcast but intensely warm and bright, which is perfect clothes-drying weather in my opinion. This is definitely one of the highs in life.