Good and Bad News

After all the great news I’ve heard this week, I was disappointed on how the week ended.

The week started out really well. I found out that one of my friends who is in an abusive relationship is out and in a safe location. I have been keeping her whole family in my thoughts and prayers and so it was really nice to hear that everything was lining up for her.

Then I got great news!! After a very long time of looking, applying and lots of rejection, my sister was offered a fabulous job as an account manager at Web MD. This will be a great fit for her. It will give her a lot of opportunities to grow and really shine professionally in a field that has a lot of potential – and not to mention - pay her mortgage and buy me a Christmas present. (Hey, a girl’s gotta have priorities!) Anyway, I am so very happy for Aon. You should have seen the kids and I do the “happy job dance” when they found out about it. We even called her up and sang her a “lovely” job offer commemoration serenade which probably brought tears to her eyes. (What kind of tears – she’s not saying.)

The North County Recreation Assn auction is coming together and some of the issues (like the Castle Rock and Toutle youth football teams playing at 5:30 way over in Wahkiakum County which over 1 hour away and the slow / low donation amounts) are being resolved so that we will be able to have people attend and support the youth sports in our area. Donations have been picking up and the weather is even starting to co-operate with us. I had visions of this outdoor auction / dinner / dance being in the middle of a horrid downpour all day long. (It still might be a little bit nippy and have a couple sprinkles, but nothing like earlier in the week.) So keep your fingers crossed.

Unfortunately, the work week is ending on a down note. Late Friday afternoon, we found out that our Drug Court did not get the big federal grant we applied for in May. If we got the grant, it would have “saved” our program and really helped it grow to help veterans in our area. Now it is slated to close at the end of the month. I feel so badly for my friend, Debbie, who is the coordinator of the program. She has been through so much this past year. If someone would have told me that we would be shutting down one of the original drug court programs in the state (and one of the most successful) when she was hired last summer, I would have laughed in their face. I am so disappointed. So keep your fingers crossed that by some miracle our Drug Court is saved and is allowed to continue helping people get clean / stay sober and quit doing crimes in our community.

Boys of Summer - Where Did You Go?

Its cold, dreary and dark when I got up this the morning. I saw on Facebook this morning that it was snowing in Salmon, Idaho. Brrrrr!!! Thank goodness we haven’t had that kind of cold snap yet – I’ll get a few more (weeks hopefully) of produce out of my garden and orchard.

It seems like just last week that it was sunny, in the 90’s and beautiful weather. No wait! That was last week!! Oh well, it is the season of sudden changes. We could definitely use the rain - so I’m not complaining Sadri just commenting. J

I was just really surprised when I realized that it is still VERY dark at 6:15 when I got my kids up this morning. I could swear it was still light out at 5:30am - just yesterday, but obviously not. It’s funny how the march of time keeps going even though we’re not as in tune with our environment or put personal awareness on hold.

Withdrawals

It seems that I am suffering severe computer related withdrawals. It is very hard to carve time in my schedule right now to get on the internet and write. I keep meaning to and remember and such great ideas, while I'm in my car or at work or at a game...but can't do anything about it until I have time at home. (My poor Facebook account is very neglected as well.) Yes, I'm developing quite a serious case of "Internet Guilt." (kind of like a mild case of Catholic guilt, but more high tech.) Big sigh!!!!


I did do a little updating with my site. Pruned some blogs (sorry Bella) that haven't been posting in a while and added a couple of my new and old faves... still can't load one of my all time favorites... O'Malley's on the Web. He's way too "techy" for me and has some funky interface that won't let me link with him. Another sigh.... You just wait O'Malley! I'll get you and your little dog too.... (evil chess cackle wafting in the background)


I promise I'll have to tell you about a few of the Summer Solistice Full Moon craziness that have shown up recently. (There was a guy who was arrested for burglary / stolen car due to his distinctive and excessive colonge and another guy who was driving backwards the wrong way on the interstate for several miles laughing himself silly all the while. - I haven't seen him yet because he refused to get dressed and wouldn't come to court.) These are both stories that need to be highlighted. Oh and the funniest story I've experienced ever in court....it revolves around industrious indignant cops, ribbed condoms, illegal drugs and non industry approved containers. :) Totally cracks me up!!! That one needs it's own entry cuz it's just too darn funny!!!

I've also been getting a lot of funny, crazy phone calls as well this week. This isn't an example of those, but will give you a flavor of the my "normal" phone calls.
I usually answer the main phone line, "Superior Court Administration. This is Alice. How may I help you?"
On Friday, I had three calls right in a row that replied to me "Hi. Is this Nancy speaking?"
"No, this is Alice. May I help you?"
After the 3rd call in less than 4 minutes, my coworker turned to me stared in amazement and shook her head. I laughed. What can you do?



In my future blogs, I also want to make sure I share my experiences at the wonderful parish mission we had this past week. I learned so much about my faith and have been filled with a lot of peace. Thanks to Father Tony Judge and Father John Kuehner and the Redemptionist Order of priests, I was pleasantly surprised attending my first Catholic "holy roller" revival. It was very uplifting and I learned that one of my childhood goals was met.... (Hurray! one more thing to check off my bucket list.)

Well, now that I've left you some teasers and me some inspiration, I think I'll turn in.

75 Degrees and Chilli

Yes it was finally warm and in the mid 7o's today (Hurray!!!) which made C's baseball game tonight very enjoyable. C played well, but his team lost again. (Our few pitchers are overworked and we have had a slew of games recently, so we have one or two bad innings when they run out of gas. - I knew this was going to happen and predicted it the 2nd week of April, but what do I know? I'm just a baseball mom and not an athletic director.) Anyway. It was a fun game to watch lots of excitement and I knew a bunch of kids on both teams so I enjoyed it a lot.





Today was Chilli's first day at Superior Court. This is the latest seeing eye dog puppy Judge Warning is raising. He just got him last week. Chilli is SUPER sweet and has a very mellow disposition. I think he's going to make a great dog. I think he's my favorite so far. The last one Grant was afraid of heigthts, so he didn't make it through the program. He has been adopted by a great family with young kids.

Isn't Chilli the cutest little guy ever????

out of it

Wow! I just realized it's been almost a month since I was last on here. YIKES!!! only feels like a week. I have been so crazy busy that when I finally do get home, I just collapse in my bed and try to get some sleep before I have to get up too early to start it again.

Basic update...I still have my job. (Whew!!!) But it is not good at work right now. Too many good people and vital jobs were cut. I don't know how we're going to make it work. (no security staff anymore, the clerk's office closed to the public just to name a few.) Everyone is very cranky and on edge. Morale is shot and it's going to get worse. (I half-jokingly say I'm going to hang out at the morgue because it's got to be cheerier.) I'm just keeping my head down and working hard. Just finsihed helping on a huge (as in 3/4 of a million dollars kind of huge) 3 year federal grant which will hopefully save the Drug Court program and even expand it's treatment capacity and options. We'll know in early September if we got it. If not, the county is shutting down the Drug Court program October 1st. Keep your fingers crossed.

It is Spring. This means the kids are very busy in sports and I'm running hither and yon to trying to make it all work while trying to keep my hair in my head.

M is doing track and is competing in long jump, javelin or hurdles, and the 100 meter dash and she is also on the 4 by 100 meter relay. They are awesome!! So far they have beaten every 7th grade girls team and a lot of the 8th grade teams as well. (A lot of times, they run both groups together.) I'll try to do a video of one of her races.

B is on a Spring Soccer league. They are doing well and having lots of fun. (It's her last season of soccer since she doesn't want to continue it when she gets to Middle School so I'm glad it's going to end on positive note - with a coach she admires and her friends / teammates that she's had since kindergarten. Yep. The core of this team has been together 7+ years.) It's so mellow and laid back. I love it!!

C is playing baseball. What can I say???? Hmmmm.... This year is a little challenging (as a parent) due to the composition of the team and some of the personalities involved, but thankfully my happy-go-lucky son is blissfully unaware of all the conflict swirling around and is having a ball. (Thank God for small miracles!) He is doing fabulous!! He is playing short stop and 3rd base primarily and actually doing well. He has also been hitting really well. In fact, he got a true stand up triple on Saturday and then stole home. He's having an Allstar season which I'm glad for him.

I'm up to my eyeballs in meetings for parks and library consolidation boards, patient advisory board, and the church's June revival mission, plus the normal fun stuff like scouts and book group, etc.,.

Well, gotta go check on the kiddos' (I've got 2 home sick today and we're waiting for the doctor's appts at 1pm)

Stayation

For my family - this post is similar to the family website post, but does have a few different twists.

The new terminology for staying home and not going somewhere when you would normally go on vacation is "Stayation". (No joke it was on the news last night.) So that's what we're doing this Spring Break. The weather is too yucky to go anywhere really fun (supposed to be cold and rainy most of the week) and the job certainity is too tenuous to outlay much dinero to do anything else. (The kids will get to go down for a couple days to visit Aon in PDX.) The weather report says Wednesday would be a good day to work in the garden so I think that's when they will go down. (heee heee - they don't know about the putting in the garden and helping with yard work part. ... yet.) They will be old pro's because it looks like Monday will be a good day to get the outside stuff done around here. (the grass is getting super tall, the weeds are stating to sprout in the garden, and the goat barn needs to be mucked - just to name a few tasks.)

It won't be all work and no fun...Aon has some entertainment planned for them (OMSI, dog park and/or the zoo). I also have some fun scheduled for them. For example: M has developed an interest over the last couple years in some forms of Japanese Anime' - Her favorite movie is Howl's Moving Castle. (She has been drawing a lot more so I've encouraged it.) Well, the library is having an anime' festival one day this week, so I'm trying to arrange it so that she can go. Also, each kid wants a friend to come over during Spring Break. so I they'll get to do that too. But we're not really going to do much other "fun" stuff - except maybe have some family movie nights or I may rent a play station or wii game for a couple days.

Mainly, my goal is to whip this place into shape before they close the dump to the public (part of the county's cost saving plan). I'm also cutting costs so I'm getting rid of my storage unit which houses Christmas stuff and other miscellaneous stuff that we rarely use...which means we need to clean out the red barn. We've kept it pretty clean and organized so it should only take an hour unless I get crazy and really organize stuff.

Good , Bad and Ugly

I had a great weekend, but not so great Monday. (I know....Are there really such things?)
I'll have to post more later because I'm exhausted. All the activities and stress is catching up with me. So I'm going to bed very shortly.

The good:
This weekend I was able to get a lot done around my house and made a dump and Goodwill run. Did a bunch of kid stuff, but also was able to go Edgefield in Portland and meet up with a couple of my girlfriends from High School. (One is my godmother's niece and the other was my best friend for years.) Unfortunately, I have been REALLY bad about keeping in touch with people and the relationship had withered. We hooked up on Facebook and decided to get together. It was really great to see them. (more to come)

Sunday we had our Twilight party. It was really fun. The kids dressed up (I was Renee ~ Bella's mom who would be leaving soon to head down to spring training in Florida so I could be supportive of my new husband's career.) and we had crazy catagories for prizes. One was the Best Goat Herder - because the crazy critters got out at least 6 times during the movie, so the dozen kids would stop the movie and chase them back. It was funny but kind of distracting.

The Bad:
I was notified today that all non union positions will be taking a 5% pay reduction as of May 1st. There is a big meeting with the County Commissioners tomorrow night with all employees. I'm going to go even though it means I'll miss C's play at his Scout meeting and might miss part of M's concert. I just have to get more info from the source. It's driving me crazy not knowing.


The Ugly:
I had my first knitting class tonight. It was fine. The teacher was a little distracted, but has been teaching enough that if you can have her show you individually it was easy to pick up. (I think all those attempts of trying created some muscle memory, because it flowed for me. Glad I had teacher within reach though, because there were several times where I did stuff that was my "undoing" during previous attempts.) I can tell that I will like knitting. It's very soothing. I can definitely get lost in the rhythm. But wow is my "practice" piece ugly. The teacher has already been scratching her head at my "challenges". Honestly I don't know how it happens but weird stuff seems to happen to me.

Well, I'm off to bed.

Another Day - Another Dollar

The budget crisis at work is really bad. (as it is everywhere) The judges and other elected officials involved in the justice system have been meeting nearly every day for the last several weeks and recently the meetings are twice a day to come up with a plan to deal with the budget crisis. The county department heads and elected officials submitted to the Commissioners (BOCC) on Tuesday where they thought they could make more cuts. (They were mandated to make an additional 10% cut to this year's budget to cover the $4million shortfall - which on top of the 10% cut they made in December (39 layoffs and a lot of services pared back) which in addition to the 5-10%reduced budget that was submitted in September.) It is scary times my friends. Scary times!! I can't even begin to tell you all that I hear, but most is very very bad and still confidential! But what is public knowledge is that the unemployment rate for February in Cowlitz County was up another percent to 14.4% nearly double what it was last February.

There are so many rumors running rampant that I won't even begin to describe them. Most I ignore. Some I listen to and a few hold a lot of weight and I take to heart. Consistently, the number that keeps surfacing over the last month or so is that 80 county employees will lose their jobs this Spring. I think we will also be asked to take a day without pay at least every pay period. (The issue will be whether the many different unions decide to go for the greater good and help save their co-workers jobs or if they get greedy as individuals and won't agree to the furloughs.) The last thing this county needs is another 80 houses going into foreclosure and not receiving any property taxes for it. I hope they go for the greater good.

The strategy I employ to deal with all this stress and uncertainity is to keep my head down, help out where ever I can ,and realize that all of this is out of my control. There is NOTHING I can do about it! (either I will have a job at the end of the month, or I won't) So I have been doing what I can to control the things I can. (Let's see this week, the carpets were shampooed, the floors scrubbed, massive amounts of laundry done, closets are getting cleaned out....) If this continues for much longer, I figure I'll have the cleanest house in Cowlitz County.

What Else?

Although, Sn*%#! was falling again last night, I refuse to talk about it AGAIN! I'm so bored writing about it. I sure almost as much as everyone else reading about it. So, what else is going on in our family....

C started youth wrestling tonight. (He's so excited because this year he's "on varsity" and doesn't have to be with the younger, inexperienced kids.) In about a half hour, they reviewed all the 'basics' they had learned and started putting different combinations together. In anticipation of wrestling starting, we went to the 35th annual CR invitational wrestling tourney this weekend and watched about 4 and half hours of wrestling. The girls were bored within the first hour of so, but I wanted to stay til the end. We watched about half way through the championship round. It was fun. C is now inspired. He really wants to do the "cool move that the really good wrestlers do".... They can lay on their backs and jump up into a standing position. He's been practicing and practicing. He's slowly getting better at it. If he keeps at it the way he has, he might just have developed the abs, back and leg muscles to pull it off before wrestling is over in March.

C also surprised me today. He won the All Star Math competition and will represent his class in the grade level. If he wins, then he will compete to represent the school in a regional competition. All Star Math is a fabulous game....I need to send a copy for my homeschooled neices and nephews for Christmas (sorry the sn*&%$! made it so that I didn't finish my shopping). It is such a fun game and can challenge players at whatever level they're at. Back to C...I am so proud of him and how much he has accomplished. I am a little chagrined to say I was somewhat surprised, because C is the kid who didn't really know his multiplication / division facts very well and was honestly struggling with some key addition and subtraction facts right before school started this year. B spent hours a day for over 2 weeks working with him to learn his math facts. (I got too frustrated and he would shut down.) But they worked and worked on it and were very successful. They both got rewards for their good work. C is such a happy go lucky kid - just like his Dad, that I sometimes forget that he is REALLY smart at a lot of things. It may take him a while to learn something if he doesn't grasp the concept immediatly, but when he does...it's for life.

B just found out today that she made the school honor choir. They will be practicing Saturday mornings for the next couple weeks and will sing extra songs and possible solos in the Winter Concert. She is pretty excited about it and is really looking forward to it. B has a very pretty voice. (Another trait my kids can be glad they received from their Dad.) She also took in her peppermint bath salts for her teachers and little gift bags for her friends since they missed the last 3 days of school due to Sn*$%#!! (She had a running joke with one of her friends that she was only going to give him a lump of coal for Christmas. Of course two nights before she goes back to school, her dog decides to eat the chocolate coal she bought. This meant we needed to make our own - which turned out pretty well.)

Speaking of food, the kids cooked our family's contributions to the church potluck on Sunday. The did a FANTASTIC job and received many compliments and nearly empty dishes. M made one of family's favorite dishes - "Southern Supper" which is kind of like spanish rice, but with little sausage pieces. B made "Mary V. potatos" which are like a grated potato o'gratin (no cheese). She also made the "world's best popcorn". It is white chocolate covered buttered popcorn. I don't like white chocolate at all, but I must say that "It is a truly fabulous!!!!" C made what I like to call "veggie pizza" or in the McD family "Laura's veggie dish". Like I said, they did a great job and I just helped supervise the chaos. I love it when we cook as family. It is so much fun. I love those "aha!" moments and the appreciation and admiration they receive later.

I should have bought a lotto ticket Sunday! I won 3 or 4 things at the potluck. I got a brand new very fancy crock pot (which I gave to a poor family with lots of kids who didn't have one). I also won a red and green tapestry/wall haning/ prayer rug with a picture of either a mosque, greek orthodox onion shaped church or maybe a catherdral that vaguely looks like the Taj Mahal. Not sure exactly what it is, but it sure is bright and C has told me it would "look really good in his room in front of his bed". Not sure about that, but it's better than the alternative. I also won a very pretty cross stitched lap quilt with a simple snow flake design. Seems like there was something else, but maybe it was all the other presents we received.

M found out that she was selected to attend the Eastbound Horsetrek for Scouts. She is super excited and will have fun learning a lot about horses and herself. It is in June right after school gets out - so her chant is "no more snow days" since we have already had 3 this year. I was very proud of her, because she took responsibility to go to all her teachers today and find out her status in their classes. If and when projects were due in each class and if she had any outstanding assignments. She is becoming so mature. (Sigh!! my baby is growing up.)

Me...I'm just hanging in there. Recovering from the holidays and spent a couple nights doing nothing except reading a book. Just finished Lee Child's "Bad Luck and Trouble" which was awesome!! - Definitely one of my favorite Reacher books yet! I also read Dean Koontz "Darkest Evening of the Year" which was completely disappointing - It was poorly written, had lazily developed characters and a very diffused & unfocused plot - basically a total waste of time. I've also been able to chat with some friends and the families to get caught up. I am slowly working on the calendar and family newsletter. (My newsletter's deadline - I'm shooting for Chinese New Year - which is the year of the Ox if you didn't already know.) I will be soon going to a local meet up that is camera oriented and offers classes in photoshop. (Can't be more perfect for a shutterbug like me!)

Now there's more changes at work and I'm not sure what all they mean yet. There were a lot of closed door meetings and bunch of work was redistributed with in our department. The good part, is that I don't have to work nearly all the criminal dockets anymore. We will go back to being more evenly split again. I could really use the time in my office. I've been just barely keeping a float with all the projects and tasks I have to do so I'm really looking forward to it. Ican't wait to hunker down in my office to use the time to get caught up and even be proactive.
oooooooooooh! Now that's a novel concept.

Well, I guess that's all for now.

Snow Day

I LOVE snow!! I know lots of people really like clear, cold sunny days, but not me! Give me a pretty postcard snowy day. After a week of teasing and temps in the low 20's and teens, our storm finally hit. (The previous two storms hit in Portland but missed us who are only 60 miles north.)

Today was our first SNOW DAY of the school year. Since it was predicted to really snow in the morning and then have freezing rain in the afternoon, I wasn't sure I would be able to get home so I stayed home with the kids. They were very excited to have school cancelled. (At first, the school district said it would be a 2hour late start.) Castle Rock was going to be the only school in all of SW Washington and NW Oregon who would have been open today, but luckily they changed their minds. (I think they realized they would have late start and early release which just didn't make sense to run all the buses and not get credit for a day of school.)

I'm excited. I'm frantically trying to get ready for Christmas (which I just realized is only a week away - AAAAAHHHH!!!!). I was able to get lots of presents finished, wrapped, boxed and ready to go. Now I just need to keep up the work. (but I'm a little tired from shoveling my walks and decks - twice so I might just take a break and hit it hard in a little bit.) Now I think I'm going to start a fire, drink a cup of cocoa and enjoy the snowflakes.)


Here are a smattering of pictures from my house today.

Winter wonderland from my front door.

Frosty finial from my back deck gate post.

B and the dogs making the world's largest snowball (or could have been a snowman's head). Cricket the black dog LOVES balls, so she REALLY wants B to throw it. It's pretty funny to watch her chase snowballs.

M shows that we got about a handful of snow by about 4pm today.

Yep.... 6inches of frostiness with another 3+ inches predicted tonight. (Oh and meterologist keeps saying we'll get the freezing rain too.)

My coworker called me tonight and said the judges did something pretty astounding this afternoon. They cancelled officially court for tomorrow...... All District, Municipal. and Superior Courts (and associated clerk's offices) are closed tomorrow. (And the best part is that the presiding judge talked to Jim Z who is the head of the county's personnel office and told them that it is paid time and we are not to be charged vacation time for it.)

HURRAY!!!!!

I LOVE SNOW DAYS!!!!!