Just the silly musings of a designer / artist / nerd / craftster / kid sister / shmoopie devotee / dijon mustard hater / daddy's girl / sassafrass raised in Sacramento and living in Seattle.
This week we had a "significant weather event" up here in the Pacific Northwest. Definitely more significant than our typical rainy day snoozefest; we got SNOW! Like shut-the-city-down snow! That's my favorite kind!
In preparation for the storm, I bought a ridiculous amount of groceries - comprised mostly of carbs and cheese, naturally. I picked up fixins for pancakes and eggs for breakfast, and tuna melts for lunch. I cooked a stew in my Crockpot (thanks Steph!) that I just finished the last of today, and I also baked the biggest tray of nachos you've ever seen. Homemade nachos out of the oven really are the best. I took no pictures of any of this, so you'll have to take my word that it all looked great and tasted even better.
The storm started on Tuesday night and lasted through Thursday. In my neck of the woods, we got about five or six inches of snow over the two day event, which meant we were pretty much staying put. If you've been to Queen Anne on a dry day, you know these hills are no joke, steeper and more narrow than any other city I've been to. You don't want to try to be brave and drive down on packed, icy snow. So we stayed in pajamas and I worked from the couch, which I wasn't too upset about.
Makai is definitely past his frisky snow days (he prefers stable, warmer concrete), so while we did occasionally venture outside for a little snowy jaunt, our adventures would only last as long as his patience. I left my fancy camera inside, but I did manage to snap a few iPhone pics as we wandered around our winter wonderland.
And just like that, the snow has begun to melt and the rain has come back. Sigh. Till next year, Mother Nature.
Every January I make a few resolutions, and sometimes I actually follow through with them. For example, last year, after 20+ years of cracking my knuckles (I started at 9, true story) I quit cold turkey on January 1st. And it stuck! That's insane! Change IS possible!
Some years I keep my resolutions a secret (like birthday wishes, so I don't jinx them?), but this year I'm going to share in the hopes that it might light a tiny fire under my butt and help me try to be a slightly better version of myslef. So here goes it:
Go to bed earlier. I make this resolution every year, and fail miserably. I'm a night owl. I am my most productive and creative after the sun has set, and that inevitably leads to really late nights with a brain that will not shut off at a reasonable hour. Going to bed before 2:00 seems like a waste of perfectly good night hours. I'm lucky I work in an industry where we don't have to be in the office at 8:00am, so the mornings aren't at all as terrible as they could be, but they could be so much better! Plus, time is catching up to this baby face, an extra hour or two of sleep will do me wonders. I'm going to shoot for going to bed at 11:30, but will be happy if I can consistently hit the 12:30 mark.
Make Makai feel like a puppy. I need to be better about keeping Makai's old brain stimulated with puzzles, more playtime, and structured walks. His body is getting ancient and achy and that makes him grumpy. It's hard for him to get comfortable, sometimes it's even hard for him to get up once he's been laying down for a while, and that makes him frustrated and grumbly and it's sad. Can you imagine laying in a position at night and being ready to flip over but your body won't listen to you? I'd be pissed off too. However, on days when he's had a lot of stimulation and playtime, he's a MUCH happier dog and it seems like his body responds well too, so I need to make the time to do lots lots more of that.
Complain less. This is going to be really, really difficult for me. Over the last couple of years I've become a professional complainer. I'm aware of it, I hate it. What used to be my biggest pet peeve in others has taken hold of my mouth and will. Not. Shut. Up. To be fair, 2011 was filled with a lot of stress, and it really feels good to just vent it out and get things off my chest. But it has to stop. If I'm sick of hearing me moan and groan about the same things I can only imagine how my friends and family feel about the constant dumping. It's a gnarly habit, but I'm really going to try and kick it. Onward and upward!
Read one book a month. I love reading. I love getting lost in a book and getting completely consumed by new characters and their lives and adventures. But I'm a slooow reader. My mind wanders when I read and I have to re-read paragraphs – sometimes pages – pretty frequently. It just takes a lot of time, which I do not have an abundance of these days. BUT! I think if I commit to reading a little every night before bed, it would help me wind my brain down better for my aforementioned new early bed time. And, I have four – count em, FOUR – books that I have read the first three or more chapters of just waiting, nay, begging me to finish them. So the first four months of this plan should be an easy ramp up. I'm taking book suggestions!
Anything that takes less than five minutes to do: DO IT. I am the queen of, "Oh, I'll do that in a half hour." The half hour turns into a half day the half day into 2 days and then the dishes are in the sink for a week. Anything that takes fewer than five minutes to actually accomplish, I need to just do. Just do it, Ebberts!
Find a focus for The Sassy Pickle. Ugh. I have grand hopes and dreams for The Sassy Pickle in the future, but again, everything takes time. Each post takes me about an hour to get my thoughts in order, then there's photo editing which seems to take forever. For a while I tried to make one post every day (sometimes I'd do them all on the weekend and queue them up for auto-posting during the week), but I was writing about things I didn't care about in an effort to just post SOMETHING, which sucks. I don't want to talk about my personal life on here (although those are the blogs I find the most interesting), but I really love sharing the things I like or find interesting and of course sharing Shmoop Tales. So this year I want to hone in on what exactly my focus is, and run with it. Oh, and completely redesign my brand, but again, the time thing.
Well, I think that's enough to get me in some trouble. I figure if I cast a broad net, I'm bound to catch something. And whatever I crash and burn on I'll just roll over into next year's list. I'm comfortable with realistic expectations (which is why "work out more" is not on this list).
I've been going through my photos getting ready to archive good old 2011, and realized I didn't share the incredible hike we went on this August to the Deception Lakes and along the Pacific Crest Trail. So here's a long overdue Weekend Lovelies: Hiking Edition.
First, to get in the camping mood, hit play on one of my all time favorite Muppet moments below. It's from their Rocky Mountain Holiday with John Denver, and it's the best camping song ever. (I had this on Beta when I was little and played the shit out of it.)
It was a four-day adventure, the kind where you carry everything on your back and kiss the car goodbye on day one. I think we covered about 24 miles total over the four days, and what felt like about a zillion feet in elevation. It was extremely exhausting (damn you, switchbacks!), but it was SO awesome to cover that much terrain on foot, and to see things I'd NEVER see in person otherwise.
To get an idea of how much terrain we covered, here are three different views of the same camp site as we made our way along the trails:
I'm telling you, the pictures don't do the distance justice.
There was so much to see, and it was hard to capture it all. Little critters, flowers, all the trees. I did a terrible job photographing the all creeks we had to cross (we even had to ford one big one, just like in Oregon Trail but with less disentary!). Anyway, here are a few of the better shots managed to grab. Enjoy!
Views from our first campsite:
Remember that rock. You'll see it again near the end.
At the start of our hike on day two, H1 found a friend! It pooped on him.
I kept taking pictures of the forest in an effort to capture how tiny we were among these HUGE trees. I don't think it translates, but believe me, we were ants.
I'm sure it has a different name, but to me it will forever be Tiger Lily Cub.
Seriously, just miles and miles of this. Unbelievable.
This is what the top of a mountain looks like when you're walking on it.
Arriving at our second night campsite:
Above is the view from our tent at our second campsite.
H2 found her own friend! There was no pooping.
By the third day of hiking, we were getting high enough in elevation to see some snow drifts.
This was one of my favorite spots we passed, because it reminded me so much of that old John Denver and The Muppets special.
We had two dogs along with us on our hike, they were great pace keepers and would run up and down the line and make sure we were all accounted for.
That is the rock you could see from our first campsite. I KNOW!!
The hike on day three was so hard. After nine-ish miles, mostly uphill, we got to where we were originally supposed to stay and it was overrun with man eating mosquitos. They went straight through all our Deet and were relentless. We couldn't even stand there long enough to discuss weather we should move on or not, we had to just keep moving.
That's when I stopped taking pictures. I took no pictures of our third night camp, or our hike out. At that point just holding my camera was taking too much energy.
After we hiked out and were headed home, we stopped and got the best burger I've had in 10 years, compliments of The Cruise In in Roslyn, WA. For your Sacramento kids, this burger rivals that of our beloved Tiny's. It was the perfect reward for all our efforts. (Photo borrowed from J's sister's Facebook page. I was too tired to dig my camera out of my bag. Thanks I!)
The whole adventure was all at once exhausting, exhilarating, fun, challenging, GORGEOUS. Most of all, it was totally WORTH IT.
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