Just a number

Boy, I don't feel like I'm 39! Of course now that I'm in my late 30s, it doesn't seem near as OLD as it once did. In fact, nothing seems nearly as old as it used to, and I'm sure many of you can appreciate that feeling.

When I was 23 or 24 and just out of college, my first job was as a social worker at a nursing home. One day one of my elderly nursing home residents asked me how old I was, and I told him to take a guess - "oh, I wouldn't put you at more than.... 38" was his reply. (Served me right for asking him to guess, didn't it!?) Of course he thought that was so young, but I sure didn't! One thing that I learned while working in long term care for the first several years of my career is that age is all relative - I can think of a lot of old 50-year-olds, and also some awesomely young 80 and 90-year-olds. I want to be one of those people, spry and full of piss and vinegar (in a good way) even in my 90s, like my dad's mother, Grandma G. Here's to you, Grandma - I want to be like just like you 50 years from now, when I'm 89!

In celebration of our birthday(s) this weekend, Dave and I had discussed going out to dinner Saturday night with the kids. But dinner changed to a quiet evening at home after we visited a nursery Saturday morning and decided we wanted this for our birthday:

Until recently I didn't realize trees were such an expensive purchase - AND, if you have a landscaper or the nursery plant them for you, the charge is half again what you pay for the tree. So if you buy a $300 tree, then it is $150 fee to have it planted - yikes! Good thing Dave's so handy at doing almost anything and everything outside; the nursery was very helpful in telling us exactly what to do, AND delivery of the tree is free.

I found this picture online, since our tree won't be delivered until this weekend. It is a weeping blue atlas cedar; we were looking for something unusual for the center of the berm in our back yard, and this fit the bill. I've been reading up on the care of this type of tree, and it definitely can grow out of control if it isn't trained, so we will have to keep up with it each year.

My boss and co-directors celebrated my birthday at our weekly meeting this morning, with a yummy pineapple upside down cake (my favorite, baked by friend and co-worker, Shana). I enjoyed one piece with everyone, and then sent the remainder of the cake back with Shana for her hubby and kids to enjoy; trying to stick with my healthy eating plan after an inspiring WW meeting on Saturday morning. And speaking of food and cooking, my boss (who knows I've been learning to cook this past year) gave me a pair of these stylish and practical Baking Beauty oven gloves - aren't they hilarious?

Mine are actually the black, with leopard print:
I'll love using them, I think they'll be so handy. (But it would be even better to get a pic of Dave using them on the back deck with his Big Green Egg- stay tuned, we'll see!).

That's all for now, off to bed.

Opening Day (and other updates)

I'm back! Did you miss me? It seems like there are so many things that I need to get done, and blogging has been waaaaaayyyyy down on the list!

We headed to STL for the opening day of Cardinals baseball a couple of weeks ago; what a fun road trip! The game was on a Monday, and we headed up with friends Chris and Jana on Sunday for an evening of R&R before the game day.

Need I say that the boys were not the designated drivers for the trip up (they each only had one beer, actually, but it was a big one!) Once we arrived in St. Louis, we headed down to our hotel near the stadium and enjoyed happy hour and dinner down on The Landing.


Dave ran into an old college roommate the next day, as we walked by Kilroy's on the way to the stadium. So we stopped there for awhile and enjoyed some lunch in the sunshine- couldn't have asked for a better day, weather-wise!


The game was awesome; I've never been to Opening Day before, and it was quite the show! The Clydesdales made their trip around...


Then several Hall of Famers came out onto the field and were recognized, including Stan Musial...


Our seats were awesome - we were underneath the jumbo-tron, had little tables for four and all-inclusive food/drink.

AND, the Cards won! I'm so glad we were at this game, rather than the one last week where they lost after 20 innings to the NY Mets... awful! We bought tix to another couple games while we were there, and will be heading up on July 3rd with Jace and Neil for a game.

The other blog-worthy event is the backyard, and all the work we've been doing.

We paid a landscaper to do some of it, but Dave (& Neil) also did quite a bit to finish it up. We had all the old yews torn out in the front flower beds, and all the old grass in part of the back yard stripped and then re-sodded, and edged the whole area with flower beds.


We just planted that little tree on the left in the picture above, a dwarf maple. And these wisteria vines that will quickl grow up over the pergola, in the picture below. These will be the only plants we have in the back yard for awhile, in sticking with our budget; but we wanted to get the "bones" of the landscaping done this year, and then we can work our way into planting, etc.


The other thing that I started on this weekend was painting the deck railing... FUN. I'm going to pay Jace to help me paint, he can earn a little extra money, and it might not take me 8 weekends to get this project done, with a little extra help!



That's about it for now... birthday weekend coming up, I'll be the big 3-9, and Davey B will be 45! Quiet weekend, just hanging with the kiddos.

Family Easter 2010

Easter weekend with the family was great; the week afterwards was crazy, so just getting around to posting pics. I love heading home for family weekends on Friday night, to have a full weekend with everyone. The emails and texts started flying back and forth on Thursday, "when r you getting to St C this wkend?"... Jace and I hit the road after he got home from school, but three other sibs and their families were already home by the time he and I arrived about 8:15 Friday night.

I had had the day from h*ll at work, one of those days when if something can go wrong, it will. I just wanted it to be a quiet day, a nice start to the holiday weekend, where I could sneak out a little early; but it wasn't. That coupled with the fact that when I arrived home, Dave said that the movie store had called him to say that the movies due on Wed were not returned. Yes they were, I returned them Wed night! Uh, to the wrong store. Nice.

So we hit the road, with me taking deep breaths and telling myself to relax. It poured the entire three hour drive, and my shoulders were up to my ears from the stress of the drive by the time I made it to St. Clair. But then I walked into the kitchen and was greeted by Ann, Tara, Matt, Luke, Ron and little Isaac, and I was ready for the weekend to begin! It was awesome to just sit down and chill out with them. Chilling did (of course) involve cracking open a bottle of wine, (they were already sipping on a little Crown and Coke) and just decompressing for a few hours.





It was a great night, just relaxing and not worrying about anything.

Saturday was beautiful, and Tara, Luke, Ann and I headed to walk the track at the highschool. We walked about an hour and a half, it was a great way to start the morning. Saturdays always seem to have an undercurrent of stress, with ongoing fretting about who is fixing what for the holiday meal, what time we're going to eat, when is ________ going to get here (whoever didn't come in on Friday night), what did Dad forget to buy at the store (Mom saying that) and then at least a couple of Walmart trips by various siblings/in-laws, to get whatever Mom or Dad forgot, and/or what someone needs to make the dish that they said they were going to make, AND some more beer or wine to make it through the evening.

And this weekend was no exception - all of the above happened. But my BILs seem to have the right attitude; they are in charge of cooking the meat for most holiday meals, and they just lay low, avoid any drama, and just do their cooking over at "Grandma G's house" (my grandma used to live there, it adjoins my parents home, and that's where some of us stay when we come home). Like Luke said, you just have to have the mindset that even though the plan was to eat at a certain time, it absolutely will not happen; so just sit back, get done what you are supposed to, and then plan to wait. And enjoy a beer, or two, or four.

The kids were talking about an Easter egg hunt all day, so after dinner Saturday night we filled the bag of plastic eggs full of candy, and hid them all over the yard. We made the older boys leave a section of the yard alone, so Sam and Eva could find some eggs. Sam was so funny, he would pick an egg up, shake it, and if it didn't have anything in it then he would give it to Eva, who was too little to know any better, and happy with any egg she got!



Isaac was too little to hunt eggs this year, so his mom dressed him up and put him in his stroller. Looks like he's having a blast, huh!? Next year he'll be running all over looking for eggs!



Here are a few family pics from Easter Sunday:

That was a week ago, and now I'm up early today, getting this posted before we head to St. Louis with friends Chris and Jana for the opening day Cardinals game tomorrow. Looking forward to a fun evening tonight and then a gorgeous game day tomorrow. Go Cards!

Out Like a Lamb

The last day of March was true to form - finally, finally, finally - an absolutely gorgeous spring day! Our crosstraining class headed outside for our workout after cycling today; it was great to be outside with the sun in my face and the breeze in my hair. The forecast here looks promising for the weekend as well, looks like just a small chance of rain on Saturday. Good weather here means that Dave will miss Easter festivities with my family, but with good reason.

His current position has him traveling M-Th while he gets his sales reps in the two offices in AR and OK up and going. He's enjoying the travel for the most part, but the big change is that he now has very limited time to tackle the outside chores and other projects around the house. He started stripping the fence several weeks ago, but rain has kept him from finishing it the last three weekends (ok, rain two weekends and Bristol one weekend, but who's counting!?) Now we're getting ready to have some professional landscaping done in our backyard starting next week, and we're down to the wire on finishing the fence and prepping the backyard. Soooo, guess who gets to have a weekend at home, which he's looking forward to, and I get to see my WHOLE family -- ALL the sibs, all the nephews and that one beautiful niece! And I'm definitely looking forward to that, it will be wonderful to have everyone together.

At work, we're finishing up renovations to our office; losing space to a physician practice is a bummer, but a necessary evil, as space is at a premium. The one thing that I really hate is we're losing our restroom in our office suite- I have been spoiled having it right there next to me for the last several years! I'm sure my bladder is going to pay the price of procrastinating on that walk all the way to our other office area across the hall in our building every time I need to go! Cry me a river, I know. If this is the biggest thing I need to worry about at work then things are pretty good, huh!? Just have to keep things in perspective!

Dave just called and told me that Paige is coming home this weekend, so while he is home getting some work done, he will also get to see her - a definite bonus for Easter weekend!

Back to the landscaping - will have to post some "before" pics on the yard very soon, before work starts. It is exciting to have some plans for the area AROUND the massive deck - one of my favorite things is that we will have some wisteria on our pergola that Dave built.

Ok, time to finish up some cleaning and start packing.

As if I wasn't already feeling like I'm not doing enough...

Check out this article posted yesterday on MSNBC about the findings of a recent study. Apparently middle-aged and older women who are at a healthy weight- and want to maintain it without dieting- need to moderately exercise for an hour every day to stay at that weight. Every single day. Seven days. Every week.

Now I KNOW there are women out there that do that, and heck, I'm even friends with some of them (and you KNOW who you are)! But that's pretty daunting. I know, you same women will tell me that I just have to make time, and make it a priority, work up to the seven days a week. Or at least do five or six days, and take one off a week. And don't beat myself up when I fall off the wagon. Like this week - although I think an ear infection and strep throat is probably an acceptable reason to miss the cycling workouts this week.

Getting an hour of moderate exercise in every day is a great goal, and I'll work towards it. I've been cycling 2 days a week, and doing cardio and some strength another day a week, and even sometimes another one, for a total of four days. And I feel GREAT when I do get that much in. I've seen improvements in my cardio, and also in my muscle tone, even if I haven't seen much of a weight loss yet. But it is rather disconcerting to realize that I will need to continue increasing my exercise as I get older, to even get the same results as I am seeing right now! Damn metabolism!

I had to chuckle when I clicked on MSNBC tonight to find and link to this article, because today's page had a follow-up article titled "Hour of exercise? Yeah, right, many women say"... hear hear, sister!

John Mayer: 2010 Battle Studies Tour

Pretty awesome picture, isn't it? I got a couple of good shots like this one, and not sure quite what exactly I did on the camera to get them! And of course a bunch that weren't so good- too much light, too blurry, etc. I was very fascinated with the ongoing quality pics and videos taken by the guy right in front of us, using a simple point & shoot camera. I chatted with him at the break, and he was modest about his abilities but his friends bragged on his other "professional" camera, and the pictures he took at their daughter's birthday party... obviously he knows how to take photographs, no matter what kind of camera he's using. I was lucky to get my couple shots, but I'd love to learn how to adjust the exposure etcetera, to get even close to the kinds of photos he was getting with a basic camera.

Anyway.... John Mayer, Saturday night, Scottrade Center in St. Louis, with friend and fellow music enthusiast, Stephanie. Our seats were great, and the music was absolutely amazing. One of my very, very, VERY favorite things to do is to see a live concert; just the excitement, the booming thump of the music, the cheering of the crowd, the anticipation of what hits and deep cuts the artist will include in the concert set (we nailed the guess on what song Mayer would open with - "Heartbreak Warfare", excellent intro) and the feeling of being "right there" with the music and the musician.

Opening act Michael Franti with Spearhead

I have loved John Mayer's music for the past several years, and this concert certainly showcased his breadth as a musician; he's grown so much musically since I saw him in 2005 with my sis Annie. My favorite music of his is from 2008's Continuum album - my blog title is from that album. As a musician, he's phenomenal on the guitar - one of the best blues guitarists of our time, according to many of the guitar legends from the past 30 years.

But his songwriting is what speaks to so many of his fans - songs about growing up, about growing older, about love, anger, and angst. He played so many great songs Saturday night, but one of my favorites was "Wheel" - at the time I thought it was from Continuum, but it was actually from 2003's Heavier Things:

	John Mayer - Wheel
	Found at skreemr.com

As Stephanie and I walked back to the hotel after the concert, we talked about some of his comments while he was on stage, just discussing where his life is now and that hopefully he's learned from his mistakes, etc. Stephanie hit the nail on the head when she commented that John Mayer obviously is a spiritual person, and his emotions run deep, to be able to write like he does. But he is also so clearly searching, for something, and is really lost in his life, despite (or because of) the fame, money and success he's experienced.

Of course, isn't that how many songwriters are? It is the searching and the torment that enables them to write the songs that speak to so many people. So I guess it is a double-edged sword - if he finds happiness and completes his life, will his music then change for the worse? Let's hope not, that both can happen in conjunction - that he can be happy AND write great music.

It was a great trip, and nice to have six hours in the car to catch up with Stephanie - we're both so busy, there's never enough time to just talk. The only downside to the weekend was getting sick - started with a scratch and sore throat on Friday, wasn't feeling the greatest all of Saturday, and progressively worse by Sunday night. The diagnosis via urgent care visit today was probable strep throat and definite infection in both ears, but I'm already on pill two of my antibiotics, so sure to feel much better by tomorrow. Dave's home from his four day NASCAR trip to Bristol, but he's steering clear of me this evening, hoping to avoid the crud!

Jace is on break from school this week, so I'm looking forward to a day or two off work with him, later in the week. Off to bed now, to catch up on sleep and get back to work tomorrow.

Irish Eyes Are Smiling...

Happy St. Patty's Day, and, more importantly, Happy 33rd Birthday, Annie! Yep, I'm putting it out here for everyone to see... you had me fooled a couple of years ago when you convinced me that it was only your 29th birthday, when it was really your 30th... but now that Tara has made "The List" with all of the family's birthdays and anniversaries, I'm wise to ya, sis!

I know Susan and Rob remember this too, the day your were born; Dad came home and announced your birth to us three older siblings, as we sat around Grandma G's table... a little girl, born on St. Patrick's Day, and the only one in the family with red hair!

Happy birthday, hope you're celebrating today with Matt, and we're looking forward to seeing both of you at Easter!