Baseball in March? what were we thinking . . .

We attended the OSU vs. U of O baseball game last night. It was the 2nd game of a 3 game series. Our OSU football tailgater friends talked and decided it would be a fun get together, so it was a date! We headed out on the MAX train and met up at Goose Hollow Inn, which we soon learned could not accommodate our group of 10. So we wandered down a couple of blocks to the BullPen Sports Bar right across from PGE park. As with our football get togethers we all thought we should meet for burgers and brews at around 2:00pm (4hours before game time) which was 6:00pm. So that equals 4 hours of brews, burgers, munchies, more brews, more video games (yes! $45 winner!), until we decide to wander over before game time. All along intermittent rain showers are occurring this entire time, so we are thinking the game may be iffy. It's raining pretty hard now (30 minutes before game time), we find our seats (yes! they are under cover) and wait. Announcer says, "We will be delaying the game until 6:30pm", Fine! more $7 beers while we wait, just great our wallets are getting thinner by the minute. Then it just pours!!! really pours, we think the game is for sure going to be cancelled, but it stops and the game begins at 7:00pm and it doesn't rain another drop. Lots of folks there so that was good, we did have to move though because our seats were right in the middle of the most obnoxious Duck fans you could find, even my hubby the Duck fan said we should move. So we moved. We froze (they should not show the temperature on the score board while you are sitting at the game . . arrghh . . we watched it start at 48 degrees and drop to 39 before we left!). It was alot of fun, but by the end of the 8th inning, with the score tied at 2-2 we left, we were cold, tired and something about baseball just not being as exciting as watching football. Didn't see until this mornings newspaper that the Beavs lost 3-2 during the top of the 10th inning.

PS. . . drinking more beer does not "make you warmer when it's cold outside" as quoted by the bartender at the Bullpen sports bar. Now why would he say that? ha!

That's not what I'm looking for . . .

Something I love to do when I'm walking on the beach is to follow the tide line. You know . . . the edge of the waterline where you find all of the treasures that the ocean brings ashore. Someday I know I will be washed out to sea as my head is always down, not paying attention to the incoming waves but just in deep concentration looking at what is mixed in the kelp, seaweed or shells that have been carried in. When I did this on our trip to Mazatlan last summer, there were all kinds of really cool shells I'd find and pick up. I brought a whole bag of them home with me carefully wrapping them so they would not get broken in the luggage. They are displayed proudly in our bathroom (I know weird place) and they bring a smile to my face when I remember the walks along the beach to get them. This week my walks made me mad more than anything. All of the "crap" that gets washed ashore. Thank God! Oregon has a very effective beach cleanup program through the SOLV organization. Which we have gladly taken part in over the years, but it's just truly disgusting some of the things you see. Of course the major culprit is plastic, whether it's bottles, caps, lids you name it, then cigarette butts and Styrofoam. I'm not sure where all of this stuff comes from but geezzz people, it's gross and needs to stop.

All good things must end . . .

I had very good intentions this Spring Break week of getting lots of work done. Like spending some time getting my blog updated (didn't happen), taking all my riff-raff off of the kitchen walls and giving it a fresh coat of paint (didn't happen), to organize a photo album of all my Mom & Dad's old pictures (didn't happen), to contact a couple of bathtub refinishers and get bids for our main bathroom (didn't happen), get our carpets shampooed throughout the house (nope, didn't happen) well . . there I have confessed (it's a Catholic guilt thing). Here it is Sunday afternoon and it's too late to get started on anything new, right?! I feel good about lots of things that DID happen this week though!. . I had a nice lunch out with Dani, Nicole, Lucas & Brayden (who were very good boys at Red Robin), enjoyed a fun afternoon shopping for perennial plants at Al's Garden Center (to the tune of $100 before I knew it! oops), and a relaxing 3 day get away to Cannon Beach with my Mom at a really nice place. Tomorrow it's back to the routine and hopefully not such a crazy month as March. Looking back on the March calendar we had far too many appointments, meetings, trainings, after hours school events, crazy work issues (hirings, resignations, meetings, interviews, budget woes, weather, etc.), just way more than usual. It's nice that I got a little bit of Zen from my favorite location in Oregon, now I just hope it lasts.

None of that sissy stuff . . .

Are you tired of those sissy 'friendship' poems that always sound good, but never actually come close to reality?

Well, here are a series of promises that actually speak reality, no cutesy little smiley faces, just the stone cold truth about friendship.

1. When you are sad --I will jump on the person who made you sad like a spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew!!!!!!
2. When you are blue -- I will try to dislodge whatever is choking you.
3. When you smile -- I will know you are plotting something that I definately must be involved in!
4. When you're scared -- we will high tail it out of here.
5. When you are worried -- I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be until you quit whining, ya big baby!!!!
6. When you are confused -- I will use little words.
7. When you are sick --Stay away from me until you are well again. I don't want whatever you have.
8. When you fall -- I'll pick you up and dust you off -- After I laugh my butt off!!

This is my oath...I pledge it to the end.

Friendship is like peeing in your pants everyone can see it, but only you can feel the true warmth (not that I would know anything about that).

They have to be my age . . .

There has been a retirement in my family. MY DOCTOR! That's what it feels like anyway. My primary care doctor has decided to retire, big jerk . . how dare he. I have been going to him for 28 years, he has some good years left still and he is going to spend them retired. . . hmmpfff. It's the next worse thing that could happen to my hairdresser moving or retiring. I tell her repeatedly, "If you move, I move with you, anywhere, anytime!" I guess I have trust issues. So I began my search a few months ago for a new doctor. I have a good friend who works for Providence Health System, so I asked her to do some research for me.

Please find me a physician who meets the following criteria:

1. Is female . . nothing against male doctors (I've been seeing them my whole life) but I'm ready to make the switch.
2. Someone that has an office on the westside of Portland.
3. Someone that is close to my age (I want them to understand me at this age now, it's a personal bias)
4. Specializes in Internal Medicine (that way I have one stop shopping, no more OB/GYN office with pregnant women and crying babies, been there . . done that)
5. Positive feedback from her patients.

So she searched for me and one name came to the top. Dr. Rebekah Trochmann, MD. Her office is located in The Portland Clinic Beaverton office, she is an Internist AND she's 52! yeah! Lots of positive feedback from patients about her. So I call to make a new patient appointment (back in November). She is so popular I wasn't able to get in for my appt. until March. I can appreciate that she likes to keep most of her appointment slots open for her established patients, I respect that. We meet, we chat, I love her, we completely connected! She totally understands me (that's huge). I decided at the beginning of the new year to start taking better care of myself. I haven't been really, seems my busy life gets in the way and I want/need to change that. First, I started to do some things with my diet on my own, to help me lose a few pounds and now with a new doctor I had some questions about some issues. I've been hearing alot about bone density testing. I asked her if all the chatter about being tested around this age is true, and she said yes, especially with my mom's history with osteoporosis. I'm trying to be proactive, that's very different from the former me. So next month it's a bone density test, a mammogram, a fasting lab blood workup, a tetanus shot with the whooping cough vaccine and pap. I also learned on my visit that the Pacific Northwest has the highest percentage of people deficient in Vitamin D in the country. This is largely due to our lack of sun (why I need to go to Mexico every year!!ha!!) and our high use of sunscreen to block the few suns rays we do get. So on my new morning routine I will pop a daily Vitamin D tab (my only daily pill so far). Kind of feels like I have been to the mechanics shop, I'm sure it will feel even more like that next month after all my testing . It's important though, and I'm glad I have finally made it a priority.

Books for everything . . that too!

This weekend we stopped by for a quick hello at our son and daughter-in-laws house. They were babysitting our other grandson for the evening so we thought great!! visit 2 grandbabies in a single visit. Nicole started telling me about a book her sister sent her for Lucas, it's called "Everyone Poops". It's a children's book about you got it . . poop. I thumbed through it and oh my gawd . . it cracked me up, it explains that animals poop (shows the pile size in relation to the animal) and adults and kids poop too! Food goes in and poop comes out. It was hilarious actually. Apparently, there is a whole market of children's books about poop. "Where's the Poop?", "Who Pooped in the Park?" "The Truth about Poop", "Who Pooped in the Zoo". . . oh there are many more!! I'm sure the intent is that if children read about poop, they won't be scared and will want to do it to!! I mentioned that the first signs of them knowing that they are pooping in their pants and they shouldn't be is they begin to hide someplace to do it. And almost at that very moment who should appear from behind the vertical blinds with a big smile and loaded diaper!!! Lucas Clifford!!!!!!

You want me to be your Facebook friend?. . .

I'm not quite there yet. Facebook. I know alot of people are all the buzz about it, but I try to blog and if I add one more thing to my technology advancements, like trying to keep up on a Facebook account I will never have time for anything other than sitting at my computer in whatever spare time I do have. There are cookies to bake, projects to paint, gardening to do, friends to hangout with and grandbabies to snuggle. Bad enough that lately I have been having blogger block, bouts of meltdown about what to even write about. Like who cares what I have to say about anything anyway? Then when I am online writing I feel like I really should be doing something else. Then every so often I hear from somebody that really enjoyed reading my rantings, so I continue. Anyway, back to Facebook. So it's been interesting lately when I receive an email out of nowhere at home or school from somebody asking me to join their Facebook world. I have to laugh because the majority of them have been my son's EX girlfriends! They don't want to talk to them, but I guess they will still talk to me!! haha!! So be assured, there won't be any returns of yes I will be your Facebook or MySpace friend, just don't take it personally ;)