Working hard to get my fill

If you had told me a month ago what a rollercoaster May was going to be, I wouldn't have believed you. The ups, the downs, the foreshadowing and the full out surprises that have occured. It will be a month to remember, for sure. 

Big changes have started to roller in a forward motion, both in my personal and professional life. All are scary and exciting at the same time. I have an idea of what the end of June will look like, but who knows. I never would have pictured May shaping up as it has.

Things I have learned in May: 

-the importance of balance.

-people can take steps in the right direction, but are just as capable of backtracking too.

-going for what you want is what is most important. Opinions be damned.

-there is no such thing as bad publicity.

-my wishes are magical.

-All you need in life are some great friends and supportive family. Great family and supportive friends are awesome too.

-People will surprise you. Both in positive and negative ways.

-Playing neutral occasionally really is the way to go.

-Never announce you have a secret if you are woman. Everyone assumes you are pregnant. Even when you aren't.

-I have the greatest parents EVER. Hands down. 

Now I just need to get over this cold and stop sounding like a 60 year old chain smoker. 

The Magical Year

I was told on Friday, my birthday, that 28 is a magical year. Astrologically - important things happen on your 28th, 56th, and 84th birthdays. I am hoping that this is true. I mean, who wouldn't want a magical, important year?

The entire birthday weekend was incredible. I really have some amazing, loving friends who are always there for me. Came into my station at the salon entirely decorated, with gifts and balloons and confetti and a huge tasty cupcake. Went out for drinks with friends Friday night and had a party at my parent's place on Saturday night.


S.R. Costa Photography



S.R. Costa Photography



Cory's cupcakes and a tiny birthday cake too. Cakesbycory.net



The amazing bag Sarah made for me. It's perfect for carting around my clippers and trimmers and color supplies for when I make hair house calls. And I do make house calls, if anyone is interested!













The other incredible bag I received for my birthday: A gorgeous new Coach handbag from my parents. Many thanks to all the random women who looked my age at the store that my mother stopped and asked their for their opinion. You all chose beautifully. I love it!





Calla Lilys from Crystal, along with some wine and chocolate. You cannot go wrong with that.




Music has been a driving force in my life and I am now set for awhile. iTunes gift cards from Aja, Mike and the girls at the salon. Anyone got music suggestions?




Also from Sarah, this inventive writer's journal, with tabs for all the inital areas of story writing.







Either my friends know of my love for candles and all good smelling things or our place smells and they are trying to tell us something. I am going for the former. Candles from Kristie, Aja and Lindsay. The reed diffuser is from Kristie as well.




Lindsay got me a Sensy candle warmer and two different scents for it.



Kate and Joe got Mike and I (The Freys) concert tickets to The Fray. Cute and definitely something I will throughly enjoy.




From my brother and his girlfriend, a gift card to Bed, Bath and beyond and from one of the girls at work, a Starbucks card.




Also not photographed, earrings from Dede to grow my earring collection, wine and cds from Aja, moisturizer and face wash from my parents.

So friends, thank you so much for helping me celebrate. I am so very blessed to have you all in my life and look forward to helping you celebrate your next birthday.

Here comes the magical year. I hope to capture as much of the magic as possible.

I'm barely holding onto you

I spoke of you last night, while having dinner with my friend Kate. Reflected on the fact that when they put you on morphine, I knew then it was the end. And I'd been looking at the calendar, knowing this day, yet again, was coming. That's the funny thing about calendars and anniversaries . . . good or bad, they keep coming. The years pass and yet, you aren't here to enjoy them.

I was explaining to a co-worker today about these letters I write each year to you, how hard I've taken your death in the past few years. What resonates with me, bothers me most is the fact that I really saw your moving to Washington as finally an opportunity to get to know you as a person and not just my grandmother. To be able to build the kind of friendships I have with my mother and her mother. But that opportunity was short and limited; I didn't know how little time we had left.

This past summer, our family traveled across the country and attended a family reunion for Mom's family. All the kids and grandkids and great-grandkids of my maternal grandmother, gathered in one spot for a long weekend of fun and games. And when we got the pictures taken, it was almost magical to see all the lives that were created or touched because of this one woman. I cannot help but try to envision the picture we would have taken with you.

Accepting that you are gone comes easier with time, but there are moments, like today, when its almost too painful to even fully think about. How you were fine and then you were under the weather and then you were in the hospital and gone. I know it was stretched out for a number of weeks, but looking back, it feels like it went by so fast. Too fast to ever fully say the things that should have been said.

You were an amazing woman. You raised two incredible boys to become incredible men. You had a spark and a spirit and a sense of humor that still resound in me. I don't see many hereditary traits that I got from you, but I still know you are as much a part of me.

I just wish you were here so I could tell you this in person.

I miss you so. Love you even more. That will never change.

Always and forever

Your granddaughter

Elizabeth June

Still his little girl

My first real job in high school, aside from babysitting and running a neighborhood paper route, was a part time position at the Paradise Bakery at the Vancouver Mall. I worked there for seven months before moving on, which is strange to think about now, because those seven months feel like they were far longer than that. Like in any job, the first few weeks were hard, getting acclimated to the structure of the job, the expectations of management, the ever-so-fun world of customer service.

Since it was my first job, my father wanted to make sure that I was doing all right, that I was happy, to see where I worked so when he pictured me, he could see me there. Somewhere in that first week or two of working, Dad slipped over to the mall and entirely undetected by me, saw me at work. I never saw him that day, only heard about it from him later on, but I knew then that a pattern would emerge. And every local job I have ever had since, within the first few weeks of starting, my father has cruised by to see.

Yesterday, while shampooing a client, for some unknown reason, I looked up to the front windows of the salon to see my father walking past, waving. Closer to thirty than twenty years old, it still made me smile. I know I am a lucky girl to have a father who loves me that much.

Posterity

Late last month, just after Thanksgiving, my family and I, along with my best friend Sarah, photography goddess. gathered up at the Washington State University Vancouver campus to take some highly overdue family portraits. One of the delightful little details about Mike and I is the fact that we have had professional photos done every year we have been together. Not a huge deal, but not an element that was in my last few relationships, so I relish it.

2006 -


2007




And now, 2008







But along with Mike and I, my family was the focal point of the shoot, which was so much fun with Sarah. She and I had scouted the location before hand, so we were aware of fun little spots like the bridge Mike and I are seated on. Her go with the flow and capture the real essence of our family made the shots much more realistic and not so stuffy posy-posy.













I love my family.

Always and Forever

Mom called me tonight to let me know that the father of some old family friends of ours had recently passed away, unexpectedly. Though I hadn't seen this family in years, I still have many fond memories that include them and to hear that Brian was taken so quickly and at a relatively young age (54) is just heartbreaking. My thoughts and prayers go out to Roz and David tonight.

I have had the great fortune to have two amazingly healthy parents, both physically and mentally. Sure, Dad had his cancer last year but other than that, our family has been most blessed with strong and healthy bodies. I just can't even fathom at this point the idea that one day, they won't be here. Mike has already had to face that day, first in his dad virtually leaving him and his brother to fend for themselves in the mid-teens and then again when his mom died. In many ways, my parents have somewhat taken him in as more than just their son-in-law, but also, their blood. They see how he treats their daughter; there is no denying he is family.

My mother and I have grown to have a relationship worth envying by girls who aren't that close to their's. There are the few topics we keep in the gray area, but the simple fact that I sent out a text to my friends to see who wanted to go see the last viewing of RENT on Broadway this last weekend and my mom was the first to respond? Speaks volumes. I have been a RENThead since I was 16 and despite the fact Sally knew virtually nothing about the show except my devotion to it, she knew she wanted to be there. And while she may not carry the love for Collins and Angel, Maureen and Joanne the way I do, she took another step in learning another piece of what makes me who I am.

Each family has their pluses and minuses. Some have many more minuses than pluses. But I know I definitely fear the day I know my father or my mother isnt here anymore, possibly more than I fear my own death. Because life cease to exist as I know it far more than it has changed so far.

A Family divided

My father forwarded some Pro McCain/Palin cartoons to my email address the other day and I sat there for a moment in disbelief that he would A. be that arrogant B. be that dense C. be that careless. He and my brother are very much Republican while my mother and I are very much Democrat.

At their house this morning, I brought his action to light. "Dad, why would you send me those silly cartoons? You know I am a Democrat, right?"

"You shouldn't be." He lifted his eyebrow with a slight smirk.

"Okay. But why would you waste your time sending me that? It's not going to change my mind to see Sarah Palin's face pasted on movie posters. I almost responded with a graphic of Obama with the word "HOPE" at the bottom, but I decided to not be so tongue-in-cheek."

"I'm sending those to all my Democratic friends. You'll change your mind as you get older. "

Ummmm . . . I don't think so.

Somebody's Hero

One of the best things, for me, about A. growing up, and B. living in Vancouver as an adult, is the fact that I get to have this incredible, awesome friendship with my mother. Truly, it is something that has cultivated throughout the last twelve years or so, because before that, it was a mother/daughter relationship much like many little girls. But when I reached the age where I could look at my parents and see them not as the flawless, law enforcing, all powerful and forever correct super-beings we believe them to be as kids, but as the flawed, individual and vastly varied humans they really are, I realized that my parents were pretty damn amazing.

First of all, they managed to raise two productive, levelheaded, educated children who aren't on any drugs of any sort (other than birth control), aren't in therapy, aren't in jail, aren't on welfare, who don't have any illegitimate children or arrest records. Two kids who have become kind, thoughtful, consider humans, who both look around and seek out how to better the world around them, for both themselves and their friends, but also, the world in general. I know I sound like I am tooting my own horn, but mostly I am talking about my brother and somewhat assuming he would say the same about me. My brother definitely was a handful as a small child, with health problems and a very dependent temperament, while I gave them more of a struggle through our teen years with my love life on my sleeve and my somewhat lack of direction when it came to the future. But fast forward to now and you have two thriving adults who value their parents and each other more than just about anything.

Second of all, they are just great people to spend time with. Always there for a laugh, a story, a movie, a day out shopping. Always there, always caring and always loving. I know when a child is born, they are flawless, innocent and easy to love. But as we grow up and develop minds, opinions and attitudes of our own, we can be a lot less lovable. And my parents love me unconditionally.

For the past three or four Mondays, my mom and I have been spending the days together. She's been off of work for the summer (a perk of working at ESD) and my weekends have fallen on Sundays and Mondays, so it seemed pretty natural for us to get together on Mondays for shopping, walking and our "WW" meetings together. I have already gotten so used to having those days with her and since school is starting again soon, she won't be able to meet me like before.

I've been thinking about her and I and my future children and though that is a future that is a few years away, I have to say it scares me a bit. Because I've had such an amazing mother, I worry that I won't be half the mother she was to me. Just because this is something that I want so badly, it doesn't mean that its something that is going to come naturally and flawlessly to me. I look at the other mothers I know and how amazing they are with their kids . . . there has to be a bad apple in every bunch, right? What if it's me?

My patience is short. My stubborn streak is wide and long and thick. I hear obnoxious children screaming in the store and I have half a mind to go and thank the mother for reminding me why I am not yet a mother. I couldn't handle that; not yet at least. Children running in my way at the grocery store make me want to scream and kids that roll by on those damn Heely shoes (indoors) make me want to trip them. I want to grab them and ask them "Where is your mother and why isn't she watching you?"

I worry that I'll have this child and it will be perfect until I get my hands on it and I manage to screw it up. I am not saying that I don't have my flaws and scars, but my parents did a damn good job of not turning us into something they wouldn't be proud of. Is it an irrational fear that I might not be as skilled?

Depression hurts everyone

I've been home nearly a week already and in some ways, I am just trying to catch up with life. I was out of school the entire week before my trip back East, which proved to be very helpful at the time. I was packing late into the night Tuesday night, but not nearly to the point that I have in the past. But you take a girl who's been out of school for two and a half weeks and then throw her back into an 11 hour day at school . . . well, for a short week, last week was a LONG week.

My parents stayed behind for a second week on the lake, visiting longer with my aunt Jean and uncle Rob and their children and grandchildren, as well as my grandmother who lives here in Vancouver, but was back East visiting as well. They return tomorrow and while they have been gone, my best friend Kate has been housesitting for my parents, staying in their home and caring for the family dog, Sparky.



Sparky isn't doing so well. The last week, he's been spinning more and more into a doggie depression and is making me start to wonder if I should look into Wellbutrin for him. I mean, seems like everyone is taking it these days, or some form of it, so maybe that would be what Sparky needs to get out of his funk.

The thing is, Sparky is getting pretty old. He's going to be 11 years old in September, and he is not as energetic or funloving as he was when he was two or three. But the changes in his behavior in the last two weeks have been massive. When I have gone to visit him, I haven't been able to get him to even take his favorite treats and he didn't do his happy excited dance when he first saw me. I realize in the entire structure of the family favorites by Sparky, I rank about fifth in our family of five (Mom, Andy, Dad, Grandma and then Me) but you'd think that after a week of not seeing anyone who has been familiar in the last week and a half, I would have gotten a squeak hello.

They are coming home tomorrow night and I am hoping to see a happy, rejoicing dog when they walk through the door. I've tried several times to cheer him up by talking to Mom on speakerphone, but it did no good. He still had that sad, far off "I'd be better off dead" look in his eye. To say the least, its a bit heartbreaking.