February 2009...

I found myself looking at my blog posts from 5 years ago! So strange and cool to have this record of my life. I just had to repost this sweet picture of the girls that jumped out at me and made me smile:

Not Blah...

Just thought I should make note of the fact that I had a good day. Nothing specific happened but I felt the funk lift a little so that's something. I've been walking on the treadmill every evening for a couple of weeks and cutting out soda and extra stuff that I don't need so that's made a difference, I'm sure. I've also been journaling every morning and evening and in between when I start to over think things so I can put it back into perspective. Writing always helps me. I think just having the blog again has helped lighten my mood, too. Everyday I end my journal entry with, "Tomorrow is a new day." And it's true. 

Feel-Good Music

Music speaks to me.  It always has.  And I listen to all kinds of music and genres, covers and originals.  It all depends on my mood.  Most of the bands we work with are pretty good but I generally like them more for the people that are in them than the actual music that they play.  I rarely just sit and listen to a band when we are working with them unless something really catches my ear.  Or my heart. 

All that to say, we worked with a band out of Austin, Texas this weekend that was incredible.  I knew I was going to like them from watching their YouTube videos and looked forward to it all weekend.  The band is T-Bird and the Breaks:

Not only were they incredibly talented but they were nice, too.  Nice is important.

Sam is the lead singer and he was great!!

I don't remember her name but she was very sweet.  I couldn't help but watch her sing and feel the good vibes that came with every doo-wop she uttered.  It was feel-good music and I was in need of some feel-good music for sure!!

 

Here's a video sample of their music.  And, yes, they really are this good!!


I actually stood and listened to this band pretty much the entire time they played.  Good stuff!!

(Picture credit goes to Jamie Woodbury who had the time and energy to take some great photos!)

McCall...

Thursday, January 23

Although I complain sometimes about the business, there are some things about it that are really good. This is our 4th year working the McCall Winter Carnival and they always take very good care of us. Housing is a very important part of our McCall events and they always provide something nice. I look forward to seeing what they have for us and I have fun checking out what the cupboards hold. For some reason it's more fun to cook in a kitchen that's not my own. They are vacation homes so they are usually fully stocked with everything we need. This is the front room. We'll need to pick up some wood for the stove!

I get excited about things like tea pots....

...and sturdy earthenware dishes....

The best part, however, is hiring Jamie to be my assistant for the weekend. She's great to have along for so many reasons but right at this moment she is listening to all of Rob's words about mixing sound. So I don't have to. And she is interested because she's a sound person, too. But I'm her favorite so we all get along great!

I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend. Knock on wood...

Sunday, January 26

I didn't have internet all weekend so I'm posting this on Sunday back at home. 

There were good things and bad things and knocking on wood didn't help because it was not relaxing. But it's over and from the outside looking in, everything went swimmingly. Just swimmingly. But I am tired of people telling me that if I would just try harder, in effect, suck it up even more than I already do, then things would be so much better. I cannot write my response to that. 

One more weekend and Winter Carnival is over. Wheee. 

So... This happened today...

Be Kind but Be Honest

The title of this post is a statement I read not too long ago on one of those motivational posts on Facebook. I actually glean bits of wisdom from those on occasion and this statement has been nagging at me. Can you be both kind AND honest? The question, "does my butt look big in these jeans?" comes to mind. You probably can't always be both kind and honest when answering that question. 

In our line of work, I find Rob to be critical at times when it comes to musicians. If they ask him how they sound, he's usually pretty honest. Sometimes brutally honest.  And not always what I would consider kind. But sometimes they really benefit from his "constructive criticism" so who am I to say that he shouldn't tell them the truth. I am much more likely to say, "it sounded great!" even when I don't mean it. Is that really helpful? It makes them feel good, for sure, but do they benefit from it?

I like to think that I'm honest in my relationships but I tend to shy away from the hard stuff when it comes to conflict. I'm better at just getting over it than I am at being honest about something that might have hurt me in some way. Although I do appreciate when someone lets me know that I hurt them so I can make amends. I think maybe my way causes more problems in the long run than the straight forward honesty when it's needed. 

I've been putting this into practice lately with an important relationship in my life. Sometimes my new found honesty causes pain and grief and I can't help but think it wouldn't have been so painful if I could have said how I felt from the get go instead of "being careful". 

I guess just like most things, this statement has gray areas. I choose to be kind but I need to practice honestly stating how I feel. Maybe that's a better way to put it ...

These Kids...

Just looking through my photos and finding my happy....

Taken at BFC December 29, 2013

Stuff and Things

I've changed. I'm not the same person I was 25 years ago. Or 15 years ago. Or even 5 years ago. In fact I'm different today than I was less than a year ago. 

 Things have shifted for me as I'm sure they do for everyone as they get older. This mid-life thing is very interesting. I have said out loud to several people that it seems incredibly unfair that our 20 year old self gets to make life changing decisions for our 40 year old self. You just don't have enough information at 20 or 22 to know who you are or who you want to be or what you want to do with your life. 

At least I didn't. Maybe other people figured it out and set goals and reached for them. I just sort of did stuff. And then I did some other stuff. And then there were some things that I did and some stuff that happened...

And so I found myself a couple of years ago looking around and saying, "what the hell?" 

And I've been working through that. And now I'm 47 and I still haven't figured out what I want but I'm coming to terms with things. I would not trade my kids in for anything. I can honestly say that something was very right in my life for these two amazing beings to come from it. And I would do all of it all over again so that they could be right where they are today. So that tells me that my life isn't as screwed up as it sometimes appears to be. 

And, obviously, I don't care as much about what other people think. 

And now I'm in the process of letting go of all of the stuff and things that I "should" have done and working on setting those goals and reaching for those things that I want. Except that I don't know what those things are yet. 

But I'm working on it...

And motivational posters seem to be the key ... ? ....

Two Things

Two unrelated but memorable things happened today that have to do with my kids. 

First of all, Zach texted me this morning to tell me about his newfound shopping, budgeting and breakfast cooking skills which may seem like a minor thing, but I found it interesting for several reasons.  First of all, it makes me happy when he shares his daily happenings with me. He's busy and I don't get to hear much so when I get a text from him, I pay attention. The second thing is that I appreciate the effort he is going to to save money by shopping and cooking and the responsibility that goes along with that. And thirdly, for around $3 he made ham, biscuits and gravy and pancakes. My baby's growing up....

The second thing that happened today concerns Gloria. Today is Megan's birthday. She is having a big party with about 30 kids at the Adams' house. Most of the kids are from her school and Gloria was one of the few who wouldn't know many people. There was a time communication problem concerning what time the party started so I ended up taking her to the Adams' house an hour late, 5:30 instead of 4:30. Kristin said all the kids were a couple of blocks away playing basketball while waiting for the pizza so I could just drop her off there instead.  She was embarrassed, I think, at being late and it felt kind of strange to just leave her on the corner with a bunch of strange kids but she got out and I drove away. 

A few hours later, 8:30 pm, to be exact, I got a phone call. The man on the other end had an official sounding voice and asked to speak to the parents of Gloria Baker. For some reason my heart started pounding and I was quickly running scenarios through my head: car accident, jail, disappearance...

I said I was her mother and he identified himself in a low, serious voice along with the reason for his call. Turns out Gloria's name is next on the wait list for drivers ed. 

Who calls at 8:30 on a Saturday evening to give you that kind of news?? And why did my mind immediately think she might be in jail?

So... Yeah. 

Stressful

I'm really getting too old for this business. It stresses me out. I worry about things I have no control over. Too many things can go wrong and when they do (which is very rare), all eyes are on you wondering what the heck is wrong. In the 10 + years we've been doing this we've only had one show that almost went in the toilet due to equipment failure but that was enough to keep me on edge. We've had minor technical difficulties that haven't affected the show but I wait on pins and needles for the moment that something might go wrong. 

Today was one of those days. It was a pretty big EDM show and a launch party of a huge 4 day show. We've had one bad encounter with the promoter of the show and that was enough to make me nervous about this one. There really isn't anything to be worried about. We've done bigger shows with bigger artists and I didn't even have to load in or work this show at all. My worry is really quite ridiculous. 

Kurt sent me this picture from the sold out show shortly after the 8 pm start time. Pretty cool...

And sent this one at 10:30....looks crazy...

Rob and I will help load out at midnight and we'll find out then just how much fun it really was...

Update:

I ended up going home instead of helping with the load out because I'm old and tired and get that option I guess. So I don't know how it went except for the updates I've seen on Facebook. According to everything I've read, the event was wildly successful. The reason I dont like getting sucked into Facebook is that one person wrote veiled, cryptic remarks about how difficult things were behind the scenes (for all I know it was probably something completely unrelated to us) and I've fretted about it off and on all day. I know that one of my "issues" is worrying about what people say about our business. And although I would estimate that more than 9 out of 10 people who have worked with us would say very positive things, I get caught up in that very small percentage who have a different opinion. Why can't I focus on the good things people say (or ignore opinions altogether!) instead of fretting over what one person MIGHT be saying. So, this is me, not giving a rats behind and acknowledging that the show was incredibly successful. And, seriously, why do I even care??

I borrowed this from a FB post and know with certainty that we did a great job!

In Retrospect. . .

In my spare time (HA!) I've been looking back through the pictures I took last year and am plugging them in to the big blank spaces of my blog.  This blog really has always been just for me.  It's fun to know that others have read it from time to time and have sometimes gotten something from it but, really and truly, it's so that I can remember my life.  And it's worked pretty well.  The last two years have been sparse but since I take so many pictures, it's just a matter of writing in retrospect.  Sometimes I'll post a link here if I take a trip down memory lane but, more often than not, I'm just plugging in pictures so I can look back and remember. 

This is my fun post for today:

Pleasure Trip to McCall

(click the link above!)

Cousins

Right before Christmas my sister decided we should get the cousins together for a photo shoot so we could give our parents a lovely 8 x 10 for Christmas. We managed to find an afternoon that worked for all of us and went to the new Village in a Meridian. It was fun walking around and making them pose for pictures. They were really good sports about it, too. And I love the color tones they are wearing that didn't take any planning on our part at all. This one is my favorite:

After all of our hard work, I uploaded all of the pictures to the Walmart website on the evening of the 23rd of December and went to pick them up on the afternoon of the 24th. Apparently we weren't the only people who had put off picture taking! There were dozens of people in line and when I finally got up to the counter an hour and a half later, I was told that my pictures would be ready on Thursday or Friday. Christmas was Wednesday. I was able to get home by 2:00 and quickly upload them to the Walgreens website and was told that they would easily be done in an hour. An hour later I was told it would be a little longer because they had to replace the photo paper. I decided to go to the nearby Walmart to do a teensy bit more shopping. Another hour went by and the paper issue had not been resolved. 

I'm a pretty patient person and it was Christmas Eve after all, so I smiled and waited. We had to be at my  parents house at 5:30 with all of our gifts and I finally paid for the photos at 5:00 and ran home to pick up the kids. I quickly pulled the photos out of the envelope only to discover this:

Half of Spencer was missing. Dang. So I threw in the towel and decided to get them redone after Christmas. It's the 15th of January and it's still not done!!  

Good memories for sure...

Here are the rest of the photos:

Ok...

Photo App

And now I'm just being silly...

Zach. Yet again.

In an effort to keep up the momentum of daily posting, I looked through my IPad photos and chose the first one that made me smile (I didn't have to look far, I took this screen shot this morning!) 

This is the fine group of people that Zach spent his summer with as a member of the summer staff at Quaker Hill in McCall. It was the perfect first job for him as well as a great transition into moving to Newberg for school. Have I mentioned that I'm proud of this kid??

Spence

Sometimes you do things just because you can. We are in this business to make money, obviously, and more often than not, I'm a big fan of charging what we're worth. What we need to charge in order to make it worth the investment, worth the time, worth our knowledge and expertise. But tonight, watching my nephew's face light up as he dee-jayed his high school dance with the assistance of sound and lights provided by his favorite aunt, I was glad I had the ability to give him that experience. 

On a side note I had an important online conversation with someone who I've gotten to know through Facebook. Someone who I used to feel intimidated by in person but now see that it was my own insecurities that kept me from getting to know her. She isn't afraid to tell it like it is and to speak truth into my situation. She asked if she could support me in any way. What an incredible thing to say. She's reaching out to me because she intuitively senses that I'm floundering. She has reached out to me on other occasions and her words have been very healing. I've got some pretty great people in my life and I'm grateful for that. 

Zach. Again.

I took Zach to the airport today. He made it back to school just fine and I think he's ready to dive into a new semester. He made the Dean's List again and is entering his 6th semester of college with an overall 4.0 GPA. I'm not at all surprised by this. He's always loved learning. He's a sponge who can't seem to get enough knowledge. It's the reason we chose to homeschool in the second grade and the reason he's doing so well in college. I love that kid and I already miss him terribly. He brings balance to our family and, now that he's an adult, we have an interesting friendship that I've come to rely on. He's wise and funny and introspective and good. I'm thankful that he's my kid. And I'm thankful that he's at George Fox even though it's far, far away.

I saved this picture off of his FB page. Someone took it of all the boys in Zach's house and tagged him in it. I'm pretty sure it was taken last fall but I just found it recently. Looks like a fine group of boys to me!

Side note... When I took Zach to the airport, we had an interesting conversation. I do seek his advice on things and he's intuitive enough and educated in communication and business enough that I take his advice pretty seriously. We had a good conversation all the way to the airport and, as I parked my truck and  turned off the key, I said something about his childhood and the hopes that I hadn't screwed it up. He said that, if anything, I had made his childhood TOO good. I wish I could remember his exact words but he said something like this: "when your childhood is too good, it makes you want to go back to that instead of growing up." I'm glad he has been able to remember the good things...

These Girls

Even though my blog has been wasting away, unnoticed and untouched, I'm still in the habit of taking pictures everyday.  It's a very good habit and it's fun to scroll through the photos on my phone and see what caught my eye each day. 

A couple of weeks ago, Megan stayed the night. These two girls, having known each other all of their lives, are totally comfortable with each other. I walked around the corner to see them each scrolling through their phones completely oblivious to the position they were relaxing in. It totally cracked me up and I had to take a picture. Pretty sweet. 

What Do I Have To Be Unhappy About?

So... A few weeks ago I went scrolling through Netflix and settled on a film that I don't remember the name of but the theme has stuck with me pretty much every day since then. One line especially stands out. I won't quote it exactly since this is a family friendly place but the jist of it is, "What the #%*k do you have to be unhappy about"? 

The movie was about a woman who had a good job, a reasonably happy marriage, a nice home, and what appeared to be a pretty nice life. When she was in high school, she had a steady boyfriend from her home town. When she moved away to college, they never actually broke up in words but she moved on with her life and eventually got married. 

Somehow the open-ended ness of the demise of the high school flame nagged at her and, in her mind, led her to believe that maybe she had missed out on something important. 

To make a long story short, she went to her home town on an impulse to maybe reignite the flame. In the process she came face to face with the bad luck / bad choices / wrong turns of the people she had left behind there. Her depressed, alcoholic brother who still lived at home with their parents, watched her pretty much in disbelief as she pondered leaving all that was good in her life for something that might have been. At the end of the movie, in an alcoholic rage, he yelled at her over

 and over, "what the %^*k do you have to be unhappy about" what the %^*k do you have to be unhappy about" what the %^*k do you have to be unhappy about"?

This story in no way reflects my life but I have pondered his words when I look around and think my life is hard. I'm not making light of depression here by any means. It's real and it hurts. But I have plenty of things to be happy about and just need to remind myself of those things on a regular basis. I imagine this will be my theme here for awhile. 

Which leads me to my "happy" for today. This sweet little Lulu came into our lives just when I needed her. I can't forget that she belongs to Gloria but I'll be the nanny as long as she'll let me!

Zach...

It been so great having Zach home from George Fox for the holidays. I haven't said much on the blog about how school is going for him and I don't plan to blather on and on about how smart he is. At least not right now. The important part of this particular post is just to remember how great THIS particular break has been. 

We have played games nearly every evening that he has been here. We've visited extended family and spent time with friends. We even managed to get ourselves to church. But mostly, we have laughed. I'm thankful that my kids like each other. And I'm glad they include me in their fun. 

I'm kind of dreading his return to school because it feels like this could be our last chance to just hang out without the distractions that getting older will bring to all of us. But ... I'm going to enjoy it while I can!