Tidbits

Tidbits are a fun 'blog' thing to do ;). No where else do you get to purge random thoughts that don't apply to a real conversation... except maybe to your husband.

1.) I have no idea what I'm making for dinner. This doesn't mean that I'm not sure what I should make.. it means I literally just put something in the oven and I have no idea what it is. My father in law gives us an abundance of meat. It's great because our freezer is well stocked and as long as we have a steady supply of electricity we're set on meat for a long time. That said.. they aren't always labeled.. and generally look very similar. Tonight's roast is either: elk, buffalo, venison, beef or possibly pork.. but it's a little more 'red meat' looking than that. We'll see when it comes out (maybe)!

2.) I have a love/hate relationship with the following things:

• Spray 'N Wash - love what it does to stains, hate how it smells and feels.
• My bangs - love how they look, hate how they are always laying wrong or in my eyes.
• Shoes - love shoes for the fashion statement, hate actually having them on my feet and hate having to wear closed to shoes because of work.
• My iPhone - love the convenience and instant knowledge, hate how dependant on it I am.
• Making baby items - love how stinkin cute they are, hate how fast they grow out of it.
• Growing lettuce - I love having fresh lettuce right in my kitchen (we have an Aerogarden), I hate that I end up wasting it because I don't use it fast enough!

Okay, I could probably go on, but those were the ones bugging me at present.

3.) I got a haircut today. It was so very super hard to find a new hair stylist. I loved the guy that did my hair in Seattle. I walked in, he had a cup of tea ready for me and we just talked while he did whatever he thought best with my hair.. which was always fantastic. So instead of trying new places, I just went without a haircut for 20 months! Yikes! I finally tried a new place in April, which turned out fine and I went back today for the second time. It's scary how wacky the hair stylist's hair is, well all of them that work there actually, yet they manage to cut my fairly plain-Jane layered hair style just fine.

4.) I'm okay with silence. Especially if I know you. My hair stylist today would. not. talk. It was really weird. A little too much silence, especially for a hair stylists. They usually talk your ear off (kind of like us SLPs)!

5.) I love British period piece movies/miniseries. Lately I've watched: Daniel Deronda, Anne of 1000 Days, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice (my #1), The Young Victoria, Downton Abbey, Ladies in Lavender and Lady Jane. Currently, I'm watching Bleak House.

6.) I hate that I overuse certain punctuation marks, such as: the ellipse..., the exclamation mark!, the semi-colon parenthesis smile ;), and the 'half quote'. I hate this, but still do it because I feel like otherwise I can't get my intent out in text and people might take my sarcasm for seriousness and that might be offensive! (maybe this belongs in the love/hate section because I do also love punctuation).

Well, I'd better check on the mystery meat!

Spring!

I know I'm a little late, spring is nearly over. Only 20 days till summer. I'm not counting down to summer for summer's sake, but my birthday is the first day of summer so it's ingrained in me.

I have such a new appreciation for spring. When you grow up in western Washington seasons aren't distinct. Winter blends into spring, spring into summer and summer into fall and so on. The beauty of this is that there are so few extremes. It doesn't get extremely hot or extremely cold. Okay, maybe there are days of extreme rain and clouds... but even then we're not talking hurricanes, monsoons or torrential downpours. So you really learn to just take the weather one day at a time and you don't think about what season it should be.

I digress. So I currently live in Kennewick, (southern) Washington. Thirty minutes north of the Oregon border. Here we have more distinct seasons but still skewed toward really-stinkin-hot-all-the-time or pretty-darn-cold-with-little-to-no-snow. It is also always WINDY!

This year, however, has been most enjoyable. I hear others complain that it has been a very rainy spring, and that it should be nicer by now. It has been perfect, in my opinion. I love rainy days, so the more the better. Also, I have a new appreciation for this time of year. It's the only time there is any natural greenery around here and when it is sunny it is enjoyable because it stays around 70 degrees outside!

Another reason I am loving this spring is because this is my first spring working in Pendleton.

Pendleton is a small town in Oregon, south of Walla Walla and nestled right next to the Blue Mountains. It is mostly known for the yearly rodeo held there, the Pendleton Round-Up but also known for the Pendleton Woollen Mills, and Pendleton Grain Growers.

Pendleton is about 70 miles from Tri-Cities and about an hour and fifteen minute drive. I have worked in Pendleton since last August. I really enjoy the people, the small town and the unconventional rural SNF I work in.

More to the point, I also love my long rural commute. Most days it's me, 2-3 other cars and some semis. On the occasional Friday there's some real traffic and that means maybe 10 cars and several semis.

The thing about this little Pendleton story, and why it's part of my Spring post, is that Pendleton is GORGEOUS in the spring. There are green fields, farms with baby animals running around and usually nice patchy cloud cover that keeps it cooler but still sunny. It is wide open but with the backdrop of the Blues. Driving down into the valley that holds Pendleton can be breathtaking. Particularly in the spring. I wish I could capture it and share the beauty but I'm not sure that's safe to do while driving. Maybe one of these days I'll pull over and take some pictures. Here is one I found on this website though.

(Un)Employment

So as you may know, I am a speech-language pathologist. I used to work in schools and nursing homes (SNFs) and always had entirely too many places of employment at one time. I was always busy and working. Mostly I couldn't say no when there was money to be had. Also, I love what I do. I couldn't imagine not doing it. I figured I'd be one of those moms that worked a couple days a week just to keep my sanity and skills up. I thought, 'what would I ever do if I didn't work... I'd go crazy!'

Once I was finished with the 2008-2009 school year in June, 2009, I quit all my jobs and moved home with my parents for the month of July. We got married August 1st and then I moved to Tri-Cities with Blake after our wonderful honeymoon. I didn't work for the months of July and August, but they were very busy months so it didn't seem strange.

I was forever done working in the schools (if I could help it) and decided to work for a contracting agency doing local contracts. I also said I'd try to have only one job at a time, in order to focus on being a wife. Ha! Little did I know, that wouldn't be a problem.

My first contract was awesome. I worked in outpatient pediatrics, with the occasional adult patient here and there, at a great hospital in Richland. It was definitely my favorite setting to work in so far (I still haven't done home health though). I loved working with kids and loved the no IEP, no report card, no meetings aspect of it. I love that the kids come to me, no tracking them down and no making up minutes when they don't come.
I got the contract at the hospital because they had hired several people that couldn't start until later in the Fall. So when my 13 weeks was up, there was no chance they'd extend me and my staffing manager couldn't find  anything else in the area. I considered taking a travel assignment in Moses Lake or Colfax but just couldn't bring myself to live apart from Blake four months after finally getting to live with him, in the same town and house.

So it was unemployment for me.

A week off was nice, two weeks okay, three was boring and by the fourth week I was sleeping till three pm and staying up until all hours of the morning. I was so sick of TV. About a month of wasted days and barely waking up in time to make dinner when Blake got home from work. It was pretty sad.

I was still going to Women's Bible study Tuesday nights. Sometimes I would barely get up and shower in time to make it to study at 6:30 pm. That was rock bottom. It's so fortunate that I did have Women's study, or I'd have had no direction and not much for support. Blake wasn't happy that I slept all day and really, neither was I.

Come January, I had to do something. I stopped feeling sorry for myself, first off. I also made myself get up and out of bed when Blake did and used that time to read my Bible and do my Bible study homework. This was the beginning of my heart transformation.

I started to realize how selfish and faithless I had been. My attitude had been horrible. I was so proud and so blind... Still!

It was through those morning hours in my Bible, through emails with godly women and through conversations during our small group time at Bible study that I saw how far from my walk with God I had wandered. More on that later maybe.

It was during this time of unemployment that I learned to have faith and lean on God again. This was the second ring of my wake-up call.

Unemployment taught me that I am not what I do. Although I do believe that God had a purpose in me being an SLP, I certainly fit the description, and love it... This did not define me. My success, income and knowledge did not make me who I was, it was not my worth. I was not lost without it. HE defined me.

Unemployment taught me to surrender to God, to trust Him to provide for our family, to have faith in HIS greater purpose and to praise Him in that situation.

Most importantly, unemployment taught me to share these things with my husband. We had to have faith together. We had to pray about this together. We needed to learn how to deal with issues together and with God's will and plan in mind... not our own!

Eventually I did find work. At the end of February I had a new contract at a SNF in Hermiston, OR. It opened suddenly and I filled it just as quickly. This was the Lord's provision and I rejoiced in it!

I began a new chapter of work with a renewed heart and renewed faith. Unemployment was a weird thing, and certainly not something I ever thought I'd experience as an SLP! This was clearly another way that God was working in our hearts and marriage to help us get started off on the right foot. I think that if it had not been for that period of time with a tight budget and a stark reality of just how much debt we had.. We wouldn't be on the path we're on now. We would have easily been pulled back into our pride and materialism and selfishness. God knew, as He always does, that we needed some more time in the desert to make good habits and for Pete's sake to trust HIM!

God's Country Revisited

It's an inside joke now between my brother, Jared, and I about Tri-Cities being "God's country." It only took him one week of staying here to realize that it's just a windy desert. You can read the whole story here.

After living here for a while now, I thought I should revisit the issue. Now that my heart has softened and my attitude improved. The irony of this joke is that in the end, this is God's country; it's the land He chose for us during this time of our lives. God not only met us here, He purposed to bring us here. Kicking and screaming on my part, but still He had a bigger plan for our lives and marriage and He knew this was where we needed to be. Despite my fight, He didn't give up on me.

I moved in with Blake when we got back from our honeymoon in August. We had already found a church but hadn't really 'plugged' in yet. I knew I needed to, and wanted to, get involved in a small group of some sort but wasn't sure how. Also I desperately wanted to make some friends that were also believers. Women's Bible study was starting in September and I debated about going. I sat there the night it was starting and went back and forth about if it would be the right fit for me (I know, I hadn't even been yet). It just sounded like an old lady's study. Something about the title 'Women's Bible study' made me think of old ladies sitting around talking about these young kids and their crazy music (or whatever). Now I realize how silly that mental image was. Our church is pretty modern and the older ladies that do attend are nothing like that!

Anyway, so finally Blake said, "Just go! You know you should at least check it out and it'll be good for you." So I went. Of course it was awesome and totally what I needed (and totally age appropriate). The book they were using for the study was called Live Fearlessly: A Study in the Book of Joshua. It was about Joshua's leadership of the Israelites out of the desert and into the promise land. This Bible study was the start of my journey back towards Christ. Previously, my journey had been slowly, slowly, slowly away from Christ and toward the world. This study made me first realize that I had not been open to God's will for my location. It was the first ring in my wake-up call.

At the time I laughed about how here I was in the 'desert', just like the Israelites were in the desert. I liked to think of my time wandering in this desert as a punishment for my lack of faith and trust in God for my future. I also liked to think of a 'promise land' that I could enter through faithfully following God's leading... surely that couldn't be here!

Now I realize that anywhere God brings you and anything He brings you through is the promise land*. The desert may be a desert but that doesn't mean it's a punishment.. and even if it is discipline, it's meant to lead you closer to Him. I am both in the desert and in my promise land. He daily fulfills the promise that if I seek Him, He will be found by me. He fulfills the promise to show me which path to take if I don't lean on my own understanding. He has promised to forgive my repentant heart and to fill me with His joy. Better is one day in His courts, than a thousand elsewhere!

It's sad for me to look back on my attitude and to see how I had slowly changed to be more like the world instead of clinging to Jesus and His love. I think about how hard I fought with my pride and selfish plans. But. I’m glad to have learned the lesson, because I can also look back and see God’s hand in my life when I have surrendered to Him. It’s amazing to look back and see how He protected me and replanted me, when I didn’t deserve it.

This truly is, God’s country!

*Promise Land: I use this metaphorically only. I realize that God's promise to the Israelites is a literal promise, and a literal land described in detail in the Old Testament.

Retroposting

I finally have a personal computer again!! My early birthday gift is a cute little netbook. My old laptop has been out of commission for a long time now. It took all day just to turn on, sync my iPhone, and turn back off. Each time I turned it on, I worried that it would be the last. I did almost all of my computing on my iPhone, which was pretty limiting when it came to typing long things... like say a blog entry.

I've been reading a few new blogs lately. Blogs of some really inspiring, godly women. It has inspired me to pay some attention to mine now and get caught up on journaling. I loved to journal all through high school and college. I still do some, but I struggled with blogging because.. who are you writing to, who is reading this, who really cares!?

I've decided that I care ;) and I'd like to have better organization to my thoughts. I like the idea of being able to look back on my blog and see where I've been. I like having things easily searchable and all in one place. If no one but me reads it... oh well!

So in addition to attempting to blog with some regularity. I've decided that I'd also like to try to compile some of the important events in life from my written journals and have them all in one place. I'm calling this "Retroposting." It feels dishonest (yes, to myself.. the likely sole reader) to just backdate posts without marking them as such, so I'll tag them as 'retropost'. However, I'll try to keep it accurate with the time period. There are some attitudes in my past that I'm not proud of.. but that was where I was at the time and look where I've come!

I'd like to have it all together, the good, the bad and the ugly.... within reason.

Here's to some pointless but life capturing blogs ;)

Long Beach in May

We wanted to go to Long Beach again with our friends, Whitney and Jason. Whitney is a teacher and needed a weekend getaway to break up the time between spring break and summer, so we arranged a May visit to the beach. It was pretty nice weather and happended to be the last weekend of spring clam season. It was the first time any of us had been clamming, at least as adults anyway. We had a good time, as long as we were finding clams and when it wasn't raining.

Blake was loving it! Giddy as a school kid!

Driving on the State Hwy, aka the beach.

They may not look intimidating, but
there are some intense clam diggers here.

We were pretty intense clam diggers too.
If by intense you mean fair weather diggers, letting our
husbands find most of our clams kind of intense.  :)

Blake's grampa is known for his notes, always with a fine tip
Sharpie, and usually very specific or precise. It's so cute!
This was what we found when we got to the cabin.
(If you're wondering, the one on right was better)

The clam cleaning begins! It's a lot of work to clean
88 clams! I helped for about as long as it took to take
this picture, because I have no stomach for the wretched
smell of clam guts and the sliminess of their insides.
Thankful for men with strong stomachs!

Men cleaning clams in the kitchen means I'm cooking
in the living room! Prep work anyway ;)

Before we left.

The cookbook we bought this time is Kathy Casey's Northwest Harvest. We used her recipe to cook the razor clams. Blake has done a lot of fishing lately and our freezer is full of cod, halibut and sea bass. I'll be needing the recipes to bring some variety to all that delicious white fish.

It's always a good time at the beach. We had wonderful food and good company!

Our Apartment

I finally tidied up our place enough to take some updated pictures. Last time they were around Christmas time. We just had people over for dinner and thus the fresh flowers :)

Long Beach Halloween

I really dislike Halloween. Have I said that before? Last year I managed to make plans and Blake went hunting. This year, in order to have a good reason to avoid Halloween parties, we are going to the beach!

It's always a good time at the beach. It might rain (it did) it might shine (only the morning that we were leaving) and it might be dark and gray, but there are few expectations and even fewer electronics to distract us. This weekend was great. We cooked in, did our usual meandering through shops and as always, had a latte and perused books at Adelaide's. I didn't buy one this time, because it's too close to Christmas. I did pick one out though, and added it to my Christmas list! Alton Brown's I'm Just Here For the Food v. 2.0. It's like a science textbook for cooking. This book answers questions like, why do we brown meat? The common reason is to 'seal in the juices' but his research will show you that you aren't actually keeping in any more juice. You are, however, searing in tons of flavor - and that's what makes the difference. Anyway, it's super interesting and has some great recipes. I hope Santa brings it this year ;)

Baklava

I have loved Baklava ever since I was an undergraduate at Western and a professor, Dr. Zeine, made it for a NSSLHA bake sale.

When we went to Greece for our first anniversary, I had to try it in it's country of origin (according to the Greeks, if you're Turkish, then you might disagree).

Anyway, it's delicious and so easy to make.

Here is the recipe that I use and my tweaks to it:

Gretchen's Baklava Recipe
Make 12-24 hours ahead of time.
Can be made up to a week ahead, but the earliest I've made it is three days.

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Ingredients

For the filling:

1 lb Walnuts - Finely Chopped (I buy pre-chopped) 1/2 C. Sugar 2 tsp Cinnamon 1/2 tsp ground Cardamom 1/4 tsp ground Cloves (optional) For the Layers: 1.5 C. Butter (3 sticks), Melted 1 Package Frozen Phyllo Dough (16 oz) Thawed in refrigerator. For the Syrup: 1 C. Sugar 1 C. Water 1 Tbsp Lemon Juice (optional) 1 C. Honey (Net weight 12 oz.) 1/2 tsp Vanilla

The steps:

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1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.
2. Combine and set aside walnuts, 1/2 cup sugar, cinnamon and cardamom
3. Using a pastry brush, lightly brush the bottom and sides of a 10x14" (about 1-2" deep) pan with melted butter.**I use a kitchen-use-only spray bottle for the butter and it is so much faster**
4. Open the phyllo dough and layer 6 whole leafs (or 12 half leafs) in the pan, buttering each layer as you go. (The edges will extend over the side.)
5. Spread 1 cup of the walnut mixture.
6. If your phyllo dough comes in full sheets, cut the remaining phyllo dough in half.
7. Layer 8 half sheets -- butter each layer. Each sheet will be an inch or so short, so stagger the sheets from corner to corner to cover the whole pan. 
8. Spread 1 cup of the walnut mixture.
9. Repeat 8 sheets and walnut mixture twice. You will end up with 4 layers of nuts.
10. Layer the remaining half sheets on top -- butter each layer.
11. Brush/spray the top with the remaining butter.
12. Trim the edges off.
13. Cut halfway through the layers using the diagram to the right. This is done now since it will be very fragile after it's been baked.
14. Bake 1 hour or until golden brown.
15. 15 minutes before the baklava should be done, mix 1 cup sugar, water, and lemon juice in a sauce pan.
16. Cook sauce over a medium heat, stirring occasionally for 15 minutes.
17. Remove from heat, add the honey and vanilla, and stir until well blended.
18. Remove the baklava from the oven and finish cutting through the layers.
19. Pour the sauce over the hot baklava.
20. Cool. Let it sit for close to 24 hours (lightly covered -- but not in the refrigerator) -- longer if you can stand it!

A nice way to serve individual pieces is to put each one into a muffin cup that has been partially flattened.
See Gretchen's baklava FAQ page for more tips on cutting. Truly, this is her recipe, I just added a few ingredients or cut a corner by combining a few other recipes with this one.

My finished product

Update: one handy hint for better living: don't dish up/serve until you're ready to eat it, the night before at the earliest, otherwise it will dry out.

Gallaher Head Lake

Our first hiking experience with the Sauras! Jason is an avid nature enthusiast and Whitney was testing the waters with this trip. We wanted a hike that wasn't too long and that didn't have too much elevation gain. This hike was perfect at 8 miles round trip and only 1800 feet of elevation gain. The trail head is about 30 miles from Cle Elum, Wa, and starts/ends at an old campground called De Roux Horseman's camp.

Interesting fact - From 1961 to 2006, Gallaher Head lake was labeled Gallagher Head lake because USGS mapmakers thought they were correcting a misspelling. It's really named after James and Eliza Gallaher (not Gallagher), two Pennsylvania natives who moved to Roslyn in the late 1800's and staked mining claims in the mountains of the Teanaway! Here's the story.

:  :  :

We headed out on Saturday morning, eagerly clambered up the trail through part of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness and along De Roux Creek. It was gorgeous as nature usually is this time of year. The hike was mostly easy going for the first three and a half miles, then there's some switchbacks and elevation gain, and before you know it, you crest the hill and see the lake. I'll  be honest, I was a little disappointed. I expected a little more grandeur when I broke through those trees. Once I adjusted my expectations and took a second look around, I realized how beautiful it was and what a pleasant little spot we'd walked into. We walked around the lake and found our perfect spot, or rather our third choice because there was a boy scout troop in our first choice and another couple in our second choice. Either way, there were enough camping spots to go around, and there were several other hiking groups that came after us and set up camp in the fourth and fifth best spots. 

Trail head picture, our last feeling of clean.

A view from the trail.

Settling into camp.

Taking in the scenery

It was a small lake and really shallow. Although I'm
sure deeper than it looks since there's probably
several feet of silt at the bottom.

On our walk around the lake.

Dinner time!

And now time to do dishes! :)
(Don't worry, we use biodegradable soap)

Sunset behind the hills.

Enjoying the last bit of daylight.

Curled up by the fire.

On our way out. Ready for some food!

It was a fantastic hike and I would recommend it to anyone. Jason and Whitney are great hiking partners and I hope this won't be our last hike together! We did decide to start a new tradition though, post-hike food at Triple XXX in Issaquah. Chili dogs, giant corn dogs and root beer floats... oh yeah!