I am no longer employed by A—-Regional Medical Center (don’t want to be found by searches). Originally my last day was going to be Sept 24, but my (now former) manager and I decided that it would be best if it was today, Sept 2. We discussed it originally yesterday and I was unsure. Paul and I talked about it and he boiled it down: When else would I be able to get paid to take a month off. Man, he cuts to the chase, eh? I feel good about my decision and you can imagine how exciting it was to come home and take a nap with the dogs!

So I left at noon, took myself to lunch at Moe’s Southwestern Grill and then bought a pair of black boots I was looking at in Kohl’s.

October 4th I start as the Team Leader for Wellness Coaching with Active Health Management. Bottom line: 1/2 the number of employees, 1 dept instead of 6, 10% more money. Paul didn’t even have to summarize that one. I am really excited about the vision the VP has and the contract that I will be working on is a HUGE opportunity. I am not sure it is public knowledge so I will keep you posted on that one.

SO! I am on sabbatical for a month. So far my list has workout, nap and scrapbook every day. Besides that, what do YOU think I should do?

OK, with this last picture…let the record reflect that I was indeed the best “French horn” player there that day. I know it was my mad oboe skills that put me on top.

You can see that we really owe Dub and Betsey a bigger than ever thank you for dealing with our chaos. They really are wonderful hosts and we look forward to our day at the lake every summer!

No caption: a picture is truly worth a thousand words.

Seriously, we just needed to get Tyler some shoes for his triathlon last week b/c his shoes were at his mom’s house and they were in the mountains. The kid goes through a pair every 8-10 weeks anyway so we decided to make it his back to school shoes. So then of course Anna needed shoes too. I am still working out the kinks to 1) shopping, 2) shopping with others, and 3) shopping with others who are not in my section. The above pic is the picture I came back to after I looked in the women’s shoe dept.

Obviously every shopping trip needs a break for snacks. Tyler was clearly gearing up for YEARS worth of shopping:

Tyler ends his vegan phase.

Anna has been very good lately about trying new foods. She picked out the horned melon at the grocery store one night, and we had it for dessert. It pretty much tastes like nothing jelly. Here is some proof:

After she and Tyler decided they didn't really want to eat it, they mixed the horned fruit w juice from some oranges we had and made "slop."

Pet Proof does not = Bluesy proof.

I feel like a prickly pear!

Overhead light before picture

Yay for matching brushed nickel!

Then our TV died. I felt so bad for Paul. He was “working from home” during the Tour de France one day. He settled onto the couch with his dogs and his laptop, turned on what should have been the pre-race show and saw NOTHING. He could hear Phil Liggett, but the screen was black. For some reason my $200 Kmart TV that still has a VCR player built in was not good enough (even the kids agreed w Paul). So my techno-geek went into uber-research mode–not during work hours, Wes, I am sure. We went to retrieve the winning TV the following Monday. [note--we did plug in the crappy TV for awhile b/c it is $35/day to stream the Tour on your computer. RIP OFF!]
Trouble was, the winning TV was clearly a winner—it was back-ordered since March or something crazy. So we got the runner up. Which didn’t fit into the space that we have and when we solved that (sort of), the central channel (some silly speaker thing in the surround sound magic) didn’t fit. It was 4 nights worth of MADNESS. Here is one of the classic moments:

Note the Runner Up lurking behind Paul giggling and mocking.

You will have to pry the machine gun from my cold dead hand.

I know it is blurry, but a great action shot.

Mission Accomplished. I will save you the rest of the story.

We also took Jake, Maggie and Katie swimming. They are so cute in the car. Jake sat in the seat like a person. Then to stick his nose out the window seems to be the be the best thing that ever happened to him. We should really all take a lesson from dogs. Fresh air = paradise.

Chillin like a villain

WHOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Barton also knew that Jake wasn’t feeling well so he let Jake cuddle with him on the bed. Paul took this pic one morning when I was already at work. So cute.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Leading from the Front by Courtney Lynch and someone else I cannot remember

2 chick former marines talk about leadership issues that are specific to women. I think I am looking for a magic bullet answer to all interpersonal skills. The health care environment is very stressful with all of the upcoming changes to Medicare. Lots of tension. Still looking for the magic.

What are you doing with the rest of your life? (I forget the author)

Pretty self explanatory. If you feel  like you are going uphill all the time, something must not be right. Right?

Superfreakonomics

Have you read Freakonomics? If not, you need to. They talk about things like why sumo wrestlers are crooked,why is chemo so widely used when it so rarely works, forceps hoarding, and assassinating mosquitoes. What could go wrong?

How much you can you stand? Martha Beck

Great book that has like 7 things you need to do to bring joy into your life. You must master each step before moving on. Problem is that I cannot master Step 1. No, not admitting you are powerless over joy. Step 1 is, “Do nothing for 15 minutes each day.” Seriously. I cannot do it for more than 2 days in a row. I have been trying for about 3 months. I wonder if she has a remedial book. Maybe something about bringing adequate feelings into your life. That feels much easier than shooting straight for joy.

I also have 3 parenting books that are more like reference books that I dip into here and there:

• Positive Discipline
• 4 Love Languages of Children
• Balance is a Crock, Sleep is for the Weak

Magazines

• Entertainment Weekly
• Time
• Endurance Magazine
• Money
• Real Simple
• Lucky
• Oprah
• Bicycling
• Inc.
• Men’s Fitness
• Fast Company
• Family Circle

What are you reading these days?

Welp, not much. But lots of stuff that make it chaotic, herding cats is what I told Elli.

I sissied out of the Blue Ridge Parkway ride so we don’t really have a vacation planned for this year. We penciled in a few backpacking trips, both with and without the kids. Then Jake got sick, or at least we realized he was sick. Jake has lymphoma. He has responded well to the prednisone (no chemo). Paul is supposed to check back in w the vet on Monday to maybe cut back on the dosage. The lumps in his neck (I assume enlarged lymph nodes) reduced in size, but now they are growing again in size. We are doing everything we can to give him quality of life for as long as we can so he has been sleeping in our bed.  A 90 pound dog takes up a lot more space than a 9 pound cat. Whoa. Between Jake and Paul, the temperature goes up about 100 degrees. He also gets soft food (can’t really eat much hard food) and we did take him swimming recently. Here is a pic:

There is more pathetic and apathetic stuff to write about but I am SO crabby I need to go to bed now.

On Sunday Susan and I went to Hanging Rock for a ride. About 3/4 of the way up Sauratown Mountain Susan had a asthma attack. Usually when this happens she takes a shot from her inhaler and is fine, but this time she still didn’t feel good after she took it. After she got her breath back we turned around and rode back to Hanging Rock. Knowing how stubborn she is I was expecting a fight when I told her she had to wait at the bottom of the mountain while I went and got the car, but she must have been feeling pretty bad because she just said OK.

Yesterday was my turn for the bad luck. I went out for a short ride after work, and in full lean through a sharp turn I had my front tire blow. I’m still not sure how I was able to keep myself from falling, but somehow I did so I consider myself the lucky one in the group. Since I was only about a mile from home and I was going put a new tire on anyway I decided to walk the rest of the way instead of changing my tube and wasting a CO2 cartridge.

So that is three rides in a row cut short by bad luck. I can’t wait to see if the luck continues for our next ride!

Corn salsa with feta cheese burgers as chasers

Even the compost pail looks tasty!

Cats settled in for a long summer nap

It somehow came up at Camp Crop A Lot (yes this is a real place, MUCH like Oz) that Paul and I did not have any wedding photos up in our house. We have not printed any of them off the CD—we only have the album thing that the photographer did for us. [Honestly—I like many of my albums better anyway!]

Do you think this is weird? We have several pics of us hung on walls in our home, some even blown up to 12×12! That is a lot of love zoomed in on! This will in no way lead to a poll on which pic to print, but I just wanted to see what you thought.

This is week 4 of the 2010 Bike to Work Season. My goal is the same as last year—1 round trip per week. So far I have 6 trips in the 4 weeks! I actually save about $5 and burn 1600 calories for each round trip based on the calculator things online and my heart rate monitor. Which is great because I seem to have ripped 5 pair of shorts in the aforementioned 4 weeks. That’s right—FIVE! All in the place where the chamois part is sewn into the shorts and it rubs against the seat. So I clearly need to 1—lighten up on the ole calories and 2—buy new bike shorts. My random thought today while I was riding in is this:

I started cycling lots about 3 years ago when I was training for Ironman Wisconsin  therefore, I bought several pair of shorts at once. I cycle my clothes meticulously (I will blog about this another day) so they wear at the same rate. Which is sucky (and expensive) 3 years later when they all blow out at the same time. Luckily, through one of my professional memberships/certifications I get a huge discount on Pearl Izumi gear, which is a fav of ours. We went to the outlet in Utah on our honeymoon and spent more there than we did for the entire rest of the trip (disclaimer: we did use FF miles for 1 plane ticket and had free lodging when camping and at Dub and Betsey’s)! So we will be ordering today. Paul only has 2 pair of bibs (what boys usually wear instead of shorts).

Anna is playing softball again this spring. She is on a team w a different coach, but a couple girls are the same from last year. Funny thing about softball–the socks. One is purple and one is gold. The purple one went missing (wherever missing socks go) after 1 game. Instead of just wearing regular socks, she wore the gold one and a regular sock. Didn’t want you to think it was a gang sign or anything.

PS–the purple sock turned up this past weekend (after about 3 weeks on vacation). It was under our bed.  Imagine that–a dirty sock 2 feet from where the clothes got pulled off and dropped. Who would have thunk it??

Anna rounds 3rd on her way home.

Tyler is playing baseball (T ball really). He is the only kid who gets overhand pitched to and he SMACKS it every time. He has a great swing and really crushes it. He gets that from me I am sure. The main thing he has been doing though is GROWING! This past weekend I think he ate and laid around the entire weekend. He even put himself down for a nap (normal for me, NOT for this 6 year old boy).

What do growing 6 year old boys and lazy 77 year old dogs have in common?

A few weekends ago Paul and I went to see Simplified play at the Blind Tiger again. Their songs are great and it is always a good time (made better by the recent legislation banning smoking in bars and restaurants). Turns out the band’s drummer broke his wrist so they had a new kid who did ok. Just a little different vibe since he was new.

We like that band so much that their song, “Home,” was the one that we walked down the aisle to at our wedding. Lyrics:
Never thought I would be the one who,
Found someone to make me feel like you do,
It’s true I dreamed of you,
And you came in right on cue,

At the Simplified concert April 16.

Tyler and I were playing basketball one afternoon (which means I was rebounding for him–I am allowed 1 shot per 1 million Tyler shoots). All of a sudden he stops and runs over to the yard by the fence. He wanted to pick me flowers and insisted that I put them in water right away so they would last. Here is a photo of my gift:

What more could a girl ask for?

I have been reading quite a bit lately (Paul would say “as usual”). I recently finished House Rules by Jodi Picoult. She could make the phone book a best seller. LOVE her writing style. I also finished Walking on Broken Glass. It was ok. I am part way through The Irresistible Henry House. It is quirky so far. Henry House is an orphan who is adopted by a Home Ec Dept of a college in the 40′s so his 6 “mothers” rotate weekly for a semester, then he gets a new batch of mother every 4-5 months. It follows him through life to watch how messed up this makes him. It is supposedly fiction, but I think these programs really did exist. I introduced Paul to Bill Bryson and Dave Berry. That’s right, Paul is STILL reading! He even said his next book will be FICTION. Imagine that!!!

We have been riding a lot more now that the weather has warmed up. We are doing our first mountain ride this weekend. Can’t remember exactly how much climbing, but its a lot. Hopefully the bike Garmin will work to measure climbing feet like it is supposed to. Last weekend there was such a drastic change in pressure w that big storm that it said at one point that the incline we were on was 850% grade! WHOA!

Scientists have found the first multicellular animals that apparently live entirely without oxygen. The creatures reside deep in one of the harshest environments on earth: the Mediterranean Ocean’s L’Atalante basin, which contains salt brine so dense that it doesn’t mix with the oxygen-containing waters above. Previous samples taken from the water and sediments in the basin showed that single-celled life was present, but a new study published this week in BMC Biology has identified multi-cellular animals that apparently live and reproduce in the sediments under the salt brine. Italian and Danish researchers describe three new species of tiny animals called Loricifera. The animals took up radioactively tagged leucine (an amino acid), and a fluorescent probe that labels living cells, evidence that they were alive when they were collected. The researchers also found examples of individuals that contained eggs and evidence of apparent molting, which led them to conclude that the animals spend their whole lives in the harsh sediments. The creature’s cells apparently lack mitochondria, the organelles that use oxygen to power a cell. Instead they are rich in what seem to be hydrogenosomes, organelles that can do a similar job in anaerobic (or oxygen free) environments. The find could help scientists understand what life might have looked like in the earth’s early oceans, which also had very little oxygen.

Saturday was a little cooler than it has been but still not too bad so we were able to get in 38 miles.  Susan said that she had a new route that she wanted to try that she had driven the other day.  I was feeling adventurous so I said sure.  For those of you that don’t know, letting Susan pick a route and having her do it from memory is a BIG risk. She is still convinced that I am taking her new ways when we do our “normal” routes from the house that she has done hundreds of times now.  All and all the ride turned out nice.  We only spent about 4 miles on a 4 lane highway, and I only had to overrule her turn choice once. When we got on the highway I asked her if she knew this was coming and she said “no, I was listing to NPR on the way and not paying attention” which didn’t give me to much confidence that we would ever make it home. After we got off the highway was when I had to overrule the turn choice. I knew we were east of our house and she wanted to go east. Normally I would have gone with it because we could have gotten home (it would have just been a lot longer) but we didn’t bring food or money so we probably would have starved to death. For those of you that haven’t notices we aren’t exactly spindly little climbers and I proved this when we got home by eating a pizza and a half. Probably not the best way to lose weight before a ride like this but I still have plenty of time .

Sunday morning we went out early to try to beat the rain that was coming in. Of course as soon as we pulled out of the driveway it started raining. We decided to keep going and at least get in a short ride. In the end we made it 12 miles (we were originally planning on about 30), but we felt pretty good about it because 45 degree rain isn’t all that fun to ride in.

7:35pm: Anna is giving us (Paul and me) a silent treatment. She is no longer talking outside of school. You may want to pick up that Sign Language for Dummies book.

She is also playing softball this spring. Last minute decision this past weekend to sign up. Her first practice tonight was rained out. Gotta love these silly outdoor sports.

7:38pm: Anna just made an exception to talk to the dogs.

Paul and I went to the Eric Clapton concert on Monday night. Yep, a school night. We are paying dearly for it, realizing we are WAY to old for this rock star lifestyle. Got home shortly after midnight on Monday, Paul went to work at 8am on Tuesday, I took a half day (got my hair cut), but of course still got up with Paul. Cameras were not allowed, so excuse the low quality on the photo below, it is taken with Paul’s Blackberry.

You will just have to believe us that the tiny blob in the center is Eric Clapton

I went to Camp Crop A Lot this weekend: 48 hours of scrapbooking! Here are a couple pages I finished:

What cracks me up about these pictures is that Bluesy really does not like to sit right on the ground. Ever.

7:47pm: Another exception for her to talk to Tyler.

This weekend Paul and I have NO PLANS except a fundraiser party on Sat night and NAPPING. My original idea was to make a list of all the things we were NOT going to do, but that seemed like a lot of work that would only lead to lots of guilt. Spring forward is this weekend. Losing that hour of sleep really kills me. Which makes me kill Paul. Sorry kiddo.

After Camp Crop A Lot I came home and had the house to myself. I decided that it was a good time to paint the playroom (formerly known as Tyler’s bedroom). We kept the Carolina Blue color (despite the season), but it looks much better now. It was a surprise for Paul and the kids. Anna and Tyler declared it not a good present.

This is the masterpiece!

The artist w her masterpiece

Anna would be on here writing the update herself, but she is currently typing up a novel of her life story. Seriously.