Category Archives: The Daily

Girls Night In

Tonight Mike and I are splitting up. Not forever, just for the evening. He is going to a comic book signing event and I am headed over to a friend’s new condo in the Pearl district for a girls night in (there will be four of us and her adorable dog Brody). We plan to eat snacks, drink wine, watch Bridesmaids (this will be my 3rd time but one of us is a newbie), and laugh our asses off. I am really looking forward to it.

One of the perks to this girls night is to wear comfortable clothes. I think the word sweatpants was mentioned. Yeah. I am not one of those people who can pull off sweatpants in public. So I have been giving this way more thought than I probably should be.

I created a Polyvore set just for the occasion, and while I don’t have these exact items, I actually do own versions of these things. A side benefit of creating this set made me remember this very cool pair of black cargo-ish pants that are vaguely sweatpanty, but have cute pockets and structure all the while being comfortable.

The weekend is looking like it will be fun but not too overloaded with activities. Friends coming for dinner Saturday night which will put the pressure on to tidy up the house. Sometimes I need the pressure of company to clean. Don’t judge me. I live with two dogs and a man. There is always cleaning to be done. I need to think about what to cook for dinner. I’m feeling like it might need to include mushrooms. I am craving something earthy on this cold and damp day.

Sunday we might meet friends for lunch at a local fish house. That is still in the development phase.

Anyway, it looks like enough plans to keep it interesting but enough downtime to relax and do personal projects and maybe a few errands too.

Hope your weekend is enjoyable!

The new iPhone is coming! The new iPhone is coming!

A few weeks ago my 3Gs iPhone was no longer able to 3G. It was frustrating to say the least. Rather than purchase a new phone I figured I would wait until the rumored new phone – 4S or 5? – was released and upgrade. Mike’s phone suddenly had problems connecting to wifi and his blue tooth device so he decided to upgrade too. Well, today is the day and we are excited indeed. I just finished watching all the videos singing its praises to get myself even more excited (a lot like listening to an artists songs as you are driving to their concert). Still, I have some nostalgia about my 3Gs. It has served me well and I am truly spoiled by having this device. Last night I took some cute pictures of our dogs and had the thought that they might be some of the last photos I took with it. So silly to become attached to a device! However, it is indeed handy and fun and shiny and maybe my photos on this blog won’t suck as bad as they have been to date. So, Mike and I are super excited. And it turns out the last photo my 3Gs took was the note on our front door for the UPS delivery person.

Guilty Sadness

This morning a man committed suicide by jumping off the Fremont Bridge.

Friday a friend told me that her company just experienced layoffs; some of the people let go were people who had worked there 20 years.

A dear friend of mine has been battling brain cancer and was doing very well until the latest MRI – a mere two weeks ago – showed the tumor was back and currently the size of a golf ball.

I came into work today, where we are still understaffed, and I made a self-deprecating remark to my boss, we laughed, and then I launched into the piles of work that need to get done. I’m exhausted from not getting any sleep (no exaggeration – I had zero hours of sleep last night) and I’m admittedly not in the best frame of mind.

Today I am feeling undervalued, tired, lethargic, and guilty about it. I’m not battling cancer, I haven’t been laid off, and I know this feeling will pass, which I’m quite sure the man jumping off the Fremont Bridge did not know.

I’m watching the clock and am desperate to go home. There are plenty of leftovers in the fridge to make for an easy night, and I have no plans other than reclining with a comforter, my puppies, and a book.

Fantasizing I am Wearing Something Warmer

I’ve mentioned it before briefly. When the weather cools – even slightly – my body decides it is freezing. Thank you thyroid gland!

Today I am not dressed warmly enough in jeans, a t-shirt, a long cotton cardigan, and ballet flats with no socks. So on my lunch break I decided to fantasize I was dressed more warmly. Specifically I wish I was dressed in some wool, a pair of tall boots, and had some gloves handy.

Bushwhacked

I’m finally back to work as of yesterday and I’m working at a breakneck pace. It is intense. It feels good to be getting things done, but wow it’s exhausting. Of course the end of my first day back was filled with people complaining, people turning things in late, and the phone ringing off the hook. Then I rushed home to change, let the dogs out, and race out to my guitar lesson where I am currently attempting to learn “Lifeboats” by Snow Patrol. It is a pretty simple song so I think – with practice dammit – even I can learn it.

As soon as I walked into the music studio I texted Mike about possibly getting a drink after and he was up for it. So we rounded out our evening last night by swinging by Bushwacker and getting a little tipsy on hard cider. It didn’t make for a restful night’s sleep.

The cacophony of two dogs snoring (Serena is home! Yay!), coupled with Mike having a restless night filled with bad dreams, and yours truly was up most of the night. It of course made me wake up late this morning so I was rushing around trying to get out the door. I hit a lot of traffic and went around the world a bit to try to avoid it. When I finally got into work, before I had even put my stuff down, I was dealing with a disgruntled faculty member. Then I opened my bag to discover my yogurt had exploded all over the place. Then my allergies flared up and I didn’t grab any allergy medicine on my way out the door.

But you know what? It is a really pretty day here in Oregon; 70 and cool and sunny. I’m wearing my cute new loafers which is fun. In a burst of optimism I dug through my purse and found a lone, linty, allergy pill in there which will get me through the day. And I remembered to bring some tomatoes from our garden in to give a coworker; it made her day and she gave me a big hug. So I’m turning it around! It’s Friday, and beautiful. We have plans to get together tonight with a friend we haven’t seen in a while and I plan to roast a chicken, which I bought yesterday so no need to stop at the market on the way home.  And – drum roll please – my new couch it being delivered this Sunday! So excited.

Canadian Invasion Wrap-up & Catholic Guilt

Did you ever take a vacation from work when it really wasn’t a very good time?

Mike’s parents visiting was really great. We all had such a wonderful time and Mike’s parents got to see him and the new house (even though we have been in it over a year it still feels new). We did Portlandy things. We tried some great restaurants, went to the big Farmers’ Market over at Portland State, and saw Live Wire at the Alberta Rose theatre. We cooked and his dad helped us with weeding. Mike’s mom also picked out some of the glass beads Mike made and we trekked to the local bead store and she bought supplies, brought them home and made a really beautiful bracelet out of them which was beyond flattering and very sweet.

Overhanging the visit, however, was the need to check in with work and manage some time sensitive things. One of which I made a mistake on. Most people handle mistakes with grace, and outwardly I am handling it that way. But my stress levels shot up and internally I am pretty upset. Mike reminded me that I am currently trying to do the work of three people and I should go easy on myself. This is true. I can also remind myself that I originally wrote out a time-line that allowed for my former staff person’s replacement to be intact and trained by her before she left, and that through no fault of mine the time-line was not adhered to. I can also honestly say that trying to work remotely on the types of projects I am working on is not easy given the rather poor quality of the remote systems. It doesn’t really help me feel better though. Why is it that we are so hard on ourselves? I rarely make mistakes and these are weird circumstances, but still I can’t seem to let it go.

I spent the morning fixing it all and have to log back in later today to finish up one more project.

We finally saw Mike’s parents off at the airport and I am doing little things around the house – laundering sheets and towels, loading the dishwasher, snuggling my pup Emma (Serena is on a sleep-over at her other mom’s house), circling the idea of going in my studio to do some preliminary sketches for a painting I am loosely planning, and popping ibuprofen for those vicious cramps that love to present themselves every month.

Tomorrow I have one last vacation day and I have plans to visit with friends in Washington. I feel some guilt for not going back to work when we are so short staffed and busy, but I also know one day won’t make a difference in terms of the work-load and it will make a huge difference in my physical, emotional, and mental health. Guilt is indeed my personal plague. I have to wonder if it is a personal issue I would have struggled with even without the catechism classes I had as a child and young adult, or if I can lay the blame firmly at their feet…

Oh, and the picture at the top of this entry is my first ever fused glass plate, which is how I kicked off my vacation the evening before Mike’s parents flew in. Not bad for a two and a half hour class (90 minutes of instruction, and 60 minutes of constructing the plate itself).

Oh, [Air] Canada!

Mike’s parents are scheduled to visit us from Toronto-area Canada this Thursday, so we have been watching the Air Canada situation carefully. And when I say carefully I mean obsessively I am checking the latest news postings every hour or so. If they do strike it will be at 12:01 a.m. tomorrow. The latest is that a tentative deal has been made (twitter link).

It has been interesting around our house lately. Ever since the fairly recent elections in Canada, Mike has been on a hair trigger of needing to express his disgust with what is happening in his country. The government’s interference has added fuel to his fire. I can’t help but compare the Canadian government interference in Union matters to American politicians discussing the merits of doing away with minimum wage. It makes my guts churn. It’s always the little guy, the low man on the totem pole, that gets the shaft. I don’t know how some people sleep at night. Let’s take care of each other for crying out loud. Is it really so hard to do the right thing?

And here I go, eh*? Anyway, we do hope an agreement is reached and we do hope Mike’s parents are able to visit. I would hate to have cleaned for no reason…other than a clean house of course. But there are levels of clean and I’ve gone for the Big Clean. So let’s all keep our fingers crossed, not only for the little guys in Canada, but for me too…because that Big Clean is no small effort.

*in honor of Canada

Weekend

It wasn’t an exciting weekend. It was productive, although not the most productive weekend I’ve ever had, but not exciting. At all.

I cleaned the downstairs portion of our house. This was a bigger event than you would imagine since I really haven’t cleaned in about three weeks. For normal people this wouldn’t render the house as gross as ours was, but we have a dirt yard and two dogs so it was quite intense. Like most people I hate cleaning, but I absolutely love having a clean house. I leave the vacuuming for the very end and in the middle of dragging the ridiculously heavy thing all over our house I begin swearing out loud about anything and everything. The dogs pretty much hide while all of this is going on of course; Emma because she is afraid of the vacuum and Serena because it interferes with her napping. I’m also clearly a lunatic so they leave me to it.

Besides the cleaning I managed to finish a small painting I have been sporadically working on for the past 6 weeks. It isn’t a six week kind of painting I was just really slow working on it. It isn’t earth shattering work, but it is interesting and the colors are luminous and I’m feeling pretty content with not only the work itself but with having actually painted something. (I’m so sorry for the horrendously bad photograph – I’d like to tell you that over the next few days I will replace it with a better one, but I’m 99% sure I’m going to be lazy about it so don’t count on it.*)

Other than that I had a shade too much free time and really started thinking about what I am accomplishing in life. I’ve been frustrated lately with feeling like I’m not really doing anything beyond going through the mundane motions of day to day living. I usually have one big long-term goal I’m working towards, but right now I just have a series of small projects going on. This feeling of discontent is good in that it will at least motivate me to keep digging inside of myself to ferret out what that next step in life will be.

In the meantime we are harvesting the last of our tomatoes (there are more than we are prepared for so I have been giving them away to friends and colleagues), and with the cooler weather I am getting excited about cooking again.

Mike’s parent’s are planning to visit this week and we are looking forward to it, but the visit is pending the looming threat of an Air Canada strike. We are keeping our fingers crossed.

*I can promise I will put more of my art work up on here at some point. I recently backed up some old photos on my little G4 laptop and grouped together some photos of my paintings and books so it is a matter of choosing what to put up and then finding the time to post them. Not too big of a project so it shouldn’t take tons of time.

Fall [not] in New England

Fall weather really hit hard and fast here in Portland, OR. One day it was 90 degrees and the next it was 65, overcast, and cool. Even a hint of cool weather can render me freezing. Last night I said to Mike, “Fall is here, honey. You know what that means! Constant complaining about being cold.” Lucky him, eh? This year I will try to curb it for his sake, but no promises. I really get cold.

Today marks the day I am no longer in denial about summer being over. For the first time since summer hit I put on shoes that were not sandals. It is a very sad day. What helps though, is that I am wearing my new back to school loafers and I am loving them. So if my little feet have to be all closed up in shoes at least they are super cute (and bonus: comfortable) ones.

My garden is starting to look a bit shabby. Pumpkin plants, when they are harvest ready as mine are now, look sparse and dry. The zucchini plants are about done and a similar thing is happening to them. The artichokes this year got aphids so I just let them flower and they are finally starting to wither as well. The tomato plants are still yielding fruit, but it seems like more tomatoes are starting to soften on the vines than not by the time I get out there to check on them. The wildflowers are trying to hang on, but are looking a bit ragged as well. The grapevine, acorn squash, buttercup squash, fennel, figs, and onions are all going strong.

I’m starting to think about really cooking again. Things like stews, roasted chicken, bread, and beans in the crock pot. It is also cool enough to clean my house and look forward to a candlelight, home cooked meal, and then a snuggle on the couch in front of the fire with my sweetie. And while I will miss not having it rain nearly every day for nine months, I am looking forward to the fall season which, having grown up in Massachusetts, is absolutely my favorite season.

I do everything I can to celebrate and usher in the fall season in an attempt to recreate the fall of my youth. There is really nothing like the crisp air, the apple picking, the hot toddies, the thick Irish knit sweaters, the cold nose, the warm mittens, the food, the farm stands, the bare trees exposing everything and giving a hint of the snow to come, the peace, and the beauty that is fall in New England.

This year in Portland we will be doing things like carving our own pumpkins with friends for Halloween – complete with a home cooked meal, some kind of mulled cider, and spice cake or cookies or apple pie (or maybe all three!). We will of course be having both Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving. And I will at some point take a drive south to wine country and visit my favorite nursery which has a small grove of trees in the valley whose leaves turn red and orange before they drop. There will also be lots of cooking. I’ll have to cram it all in before the rains come, but rest assured I will get my hit of the kind of fall season I miss and crave.

Who Says You Can’t Wear It [Again]

Over the years I have found myself struggling more and more to get dressed and be satisfied, and comfortable, with what I put on to face my day. If I try to deviate from my “uniform” at all (i.e. those 1-3 outfits you throw on without thinking about it and without looking too hard in the mirror) then my bedroom looks like a tornado hit it. Inevitably I try on nearly everything I own…and then walk out either in the same damned uniform, or in something uncomfortable that I end up yanking on all day. I’ve also, like a lot of women, put on some weight over the years and I was just flat out sick of waiting for that day I’d be the perfect size 8/10 again. The problem is, it had been so long since I really even thought about fashion that I had no clue how my own personal style might have evolved.

The first thing I did was look for a some help online. But guess what? Females in their forties are this weirdly forgotten group of people when it comes to fashion. Oh, there are magazines and articles out there that supposedly address – and dress -the forty+ set, but really all I’ve found are articles on what I am no longer allowed to wear, which is ridiculous, and fashion spreads that show me clothing that is so boring I’d rather stick to my tired old uniform.

In frustration I decided to switch tactics and look for a fashion icon instead; just one woman in my age range whose personal style I admired.  It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. After a lot of digging the person I settled on was the French model Ines de La Fressange. You can’t know how ironic this is because I was a teenager when she became the face of Chanel and I remember being disappointed with how rail thin she was. She is still rather thin, but she does indeed have some great personal style and is even eleven years older than me so I think hers is the kind of style I can emulate for quite some time. I even went so far as to purchase her book.

In the end it isn’t so much about actual clothing choices, it is about attitude and a careful carelessness. Putting together classic pieces with a personal touch added and always, always, always, being comfortable – both in your skin and in your clothes.

Finally I decided I needed to start getting a handle on my own style preferences without all the external “help” from magazines and web articles. A website that helped me define my style was Polyvore. It is really just a place to gather the things you like and put them together on a “board.” My style quickly began to emerge, and the nice thing about it is that when certain pieces start popping up across sets you get an idea of wardrobe staples.

Turns out my style is rather classic and simple. Some of the pieces I put together for myself on Polyvore are pricey, but I know I can duplicate these looks with more inexpensive brands if need be. And guess what? I like these looks so much more than any I’ve seen in magazine spreads I’ve come across to date. If you want to take a look at my personal style on Polyvore click here.

Yesterday I did some fall shopping and I decided to buy a pair of shoes I used to wear in high school; the classic black loafer.

Bass, black, tasseled Weejuns to be exact.

They remind me of back to school shopping back in the day. My sister and I would always hit a Bass outlet store in Kennebunk, Maine and get our new pair of loafers for the coming school year (usually the classic burgundy penny loafer). When I left the store I snapped a picture of my new Weejuns and sent it to my sister who is now online shopping for a pair herself. So out the window goes that old saying that if you wore a style when you were a kid, if it comes back around you can’t wear it again. Who the hell makes up these rules anyway? Idiots. Some things never go out of style and as long as I don’t wear it with a pair of elastic waist jeans I should be good to go.

Along with the Weejuns, I bought a couple of other fall staples – a classic black cardigan, and an army green cotton jacket. These things should carry me through the cool weather we will hopefully be experiencing soon.

I also picked up a cute accessory. An adorable, and inexpensive ($22.00) watch locket, which is just the kind of classic, but interesting and unique, accessory that can really make a simple outfit more interesting. And you can’t go wrong when it is only twenty-two bucks!