Things to Be Thankful for this Spring

How easy it is for us (well, me) to complain!  Last weekend we got 4-and-a-half glorious inches of much-needed rain.  After it had come down in buckets for 2 straight days, our poor dry creek finally started running again.  You would think that I would be thankful (and I was, for a couple of days, there) but yesterday, the hubs was looking at the week's weather forecast (we need to know how to dress for campus!) and the next few days are "70's and sunny", to which my reply was, "Oh, brother."  We actually do need quite a bit more rain.  But hubs responded, "You cannot actually be complaining about that!" (he said it in a very kind way), which made me think.  It seems to me like the weather, and maybe the president (whoever it may be) are two things that half the general population is always complaining about.  So I have decided to play a game called "What Can I Be Thankful For Right Now?"
1. As I type this, I am sitting on the back deck with my son (who is doing his American History homework), one cat, one dog, and two chickens, in the sun, and we are listening to an A's-Dodgers game on the computer.
2. I got to spend 4 days last week in Temecula with other Cru moms and wives from our region, including my friends Melissa (we were randomly placed in the same freshman Bible study in college and our kids call each other 'cousin'),  Vivian (she came on staff with me and Melissa in 1989 and recently survived breast cancer and wrote a book about it  called Warrior In Pink), and Jill (she came on staff with Jamey just before me and was on my team for years in Irvine, and we run together at many conferences).
3. My 'to-do' list for the next day-and-a-half includes the following: go to a golf match (we are watching Jason's friend Beanie - that's a nickname I gave him in the third grade and he still lets me call him that), go to a tennis match (Grace's boyfriend Devin plays for Cal Poly), and go out for lunch at my favorite deli with a coworker.
4. On Saturday, Jason took Max-the-Dog down to the creek for one of his favorite dog activities: retrieving rocks by sticking his entire head under water.
5. There are hyacinths blooming in my front yard.

6. I am making my friend Terry's mac and cheese tonight for dinner.  It has bacon in it.  Everyone is thankful for that.
7. We made it through our third soccer season in a row without having to sit through a downpour.  This is incredible for a winter sport!
8. Did I mention it's baseball season?  I just switched my ring tone from the Monday Night Football theme to "Take Me Out To The Ball Game".  This makes me happy.
9. Saturday night our students showed a video that they made as a tribute to Jamey - I will attempt to post it here on this blog for your enjoyment.  It's a parody of a very horrible song called "What Does The Fox Say?" in case you wondered.
10. In a week, I get to celebrate St Patricks Day by having our whole staff team over for a real Irish dinner and speak in my best Irish brogue for the whole evening.  This is one of my favorite days of the year.
This is proof that if you look hard enough (and it usually isn't very hard), there is plenty to be thankful for at all times.

We Are "Those" Dog Owners

We discovered a couple of weeks ago that our beloved dog Max has (had?) congestive heart failure.  It's not a surprise that he has gotten old and gray (actually, according to the chart in the vet's office, he has passed the 'adult' and 'elderly' stages and has moved into 'geriatric'), and, truth be told, I knew when we got him from the pound that we would in all probability outlive him.  But still, it's not something that you ever really expect.  There's a rumor going around that I am cold and heartless, but this is not always true (except with really mean or dumb people).  I am the little girl who cried in the bathroom for an hour after reading Where The Red Fern Grows (side note: What the heck kind of terrible book is that to put in the children's section of the library?  And what kind of person writes a book like that for children?!).  I still have never watched "Old Yeller" all the way through, and when I read The Yearling out loud to my own kids, I changed the ending so that for years they thought the deer just ran away into the woods.  
So, when we realized what it was (thank you Google) that was causing Max-the-Dog to cough and have trouble breathing, we prepared for the worst as we took him to the vet.  Seriously, we made Jason get up in the wee hours of the morning and say goodbye to him, and with many tears, we drove down to the vet's office.  Max-the-Dog is probably one of the very few pets that actually loves visiting the vet, so he wagged his tail as he struggled into the car, which made it worse of course.  We were fully expecting sweet Dr Hallock to tell us that it was time to put Max down. Tragic.  Heartbreaking.
But, after a blood test and an xray, it was determined that, with new advances in heart medicine, Max-the-Dog can hopefully live another wonderful "6 to 12 months".  A reprieve!  So, Jamey and I have now become "those people" who faithfully give their dog heart medicine (three kinds!) twice a day, in wonderful meaty canned food, no less.  Pricey, yes, but what else can you do for a dog who has faithfully watched over you, your kids, your yard, your walnut tree and your chickens for ten years?
Max of course might be under the illusion that he has already died and gone to dog heaven, since he now gets to eat basically whatever he wants, come inside way more often, and is going on rides to visit his favorite places.  He seems to be back to normal - just this morning he chased a squirrel up the apricot tree, across the electric wire and out of the yard.  So, we are okay with being 'those pet parents' who put little pills in peanut butter sandwiches and make sure they get eaten (actually, while Max-the-Dog does love peanut butter, he eats everything, so I can simply throw the pills on top of his dinner and he will eat every bit very happily) if it means that we get some good extra time with our good boy.

Thoughts on My Third Half Marathon

That's correct, I recently ran my third half marathon.  For someone who never wanted to run more than a mile at track practice, I kind of amazed myself!  It turns out that what I really like about running (at a lovely s-l-o-w pace) is having some alone time to just think and listen to music.  Running around our neighborhood is wonderful, because I get to run mostly past cattle ranches, big yards, gardens, oak trees and fields, among rolling hills.  I am not sure I would run in another setting.  Plus, the fog is a HUGE bonus - I've always kind of loathed running in the sun (did I mention I ran track in Arizona?!  For Pete's sake, what was wrong with me?)  
As I was training for this half marathon, I found myself looking at some articles and blogs that I haven't looked at before.  For example, the training program I used this time was called "Couch Potato to Half Marathon".  I looked up tips on how to deal with aching feet, tight Achilles tendons, and joints without constantly eating ibuprofin (my solution, and I think it might have worked - at least, I ran the whole thing pain-free - was taking Turmeric tablets. You can research for yourself...) The best (?) article was actually recommended to me by someone who will remain nameless (not a family member, but a friend who also runs).  It is from a web site for women over 45 who are training for 10Ks and beyond, and the article is called, I kid you not, "How Not To Poop Yourself While Running".  I am proud to say I did not have any such issues at any point during my training or the race.  The grossest thing I had to do was use my sleeve to wipe my nose.
The best part of the race was seeing my husband at about mile 3, cheering me on from the side of the road, and then of course at the finish line, where I was greeted by my sweet daughter Grace and her great friend Stephanie (who I love), dressed up in hilarious outfits with signs.  They made me laugh so hard I forgot to look at my time (it was 2:20 - I looked on the web site later on) and brought me my post-race drink, my favorite pink fleece (it stayed gloriously foggy and cool the whole way), and my flip flops, and gave me a ride home so I didn't have to take the sweaty shuttle (not the real name, but everyone knows that's what it is).
I am really enjoying not getting up for training runs when it is still dark out, but I really had so much fun that I have already signed up for another run - this time my absolute favorite, the 8-mile Castle To Coast run that starts at Hearst Castle and ends in Cambria and goes right along PCH.  I'm looking forward to that....and to getting a new pair of running shoes!

Home Again Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Our summer travels this year took us to Orange County (4 times), Colorado, New Mexico, and Chicago.  Here are some of my observations:
Some deserts (the Sonora, for example) are really beautiful.  The Mojave is not one of them.
We stopped for lunch in Las Vegas - met some wonderful friends (who live in Henderson, NV) - at a restaurant in a casino.  The burger was great - in fact, the sandwiches were all stacked so tall that they put a steak knife into them to keep them from falling over until they were delivered to the table.  Throughout the whole meal, I kept thinking I could smell a brush fire, and wondered where it was....turns out it was just all of the cigarette smoke.
Things seen along the I-70: Galloway or "Dutch Belted" cattle - one of my favorites, they are the black ones with the white stripe around the middle.  Upon crossing into Utah, a "Speed Limit 80 mph" sign - it brought joy to my Mario-cart-loving soul.  In Vail, at over 8000 feet, in July, snow.  Sadly, along Wolf Creek Pass, thousands of dead pine trees (victims of some kind of bark beetle, I was told), but at the same time, hundreds and hundreds of new, baby pine trees, growing up under the brown ones (surely there is some kind of lesson to be learned there, at another time, when I have a moment to think....).  Also sadly, one 2-liter bottle full of a yellow liquid, discarded along the highway (yuck!).
Needles, California might just be the worst place in the country, and that is hard for me to admit, because I have been to places like Nevada, El Paso, and New Jersey, and because I have a soft spot for Route 66 towns.  If you don't believe me, you should check out the reviews on Yelp.  Let me just say that our feet got dirty from the carpet in the hotel room.
There is a spot on the 101, just north of Los Olivos, that can make me teary almost every time I drive it.  It is Steinbeckian in its grandeur, and makes me grateful I live here every time I see it (rolling hills, stands of oaks, a great old barn, and a pond).
There truly is no place like our neighborhood - which I would like to prove with this photo of our dinner a few days ago, minus the steaks that were on the grill.  All of this food was from either our garden or our neighborhood farmer's market, including the amazing goat cheese made by my neighbor, that we devoured.
Something in the human heart is just always longing for home, I think.

One Sure Way to Feel Great

Last month, my neighbor Monica had an idea.  This isn't uncommon - she has lots of ideas, and most of them are great, and involve some way to make the neighborhood feel more like a community.  She has organized our Garden Farms Farmers' Market, book exchanges, fundraisers, the neighborhood newsletter and directory, Christmas caroling, a parade, and that's not even half the stuff I can think of.  So, I wasn't at all surprised when she had the following idea of a way to encourage and support our neighbor Sue, who is undergoing a round of chemo for cancer: "since Sue loves rhubarb, I would love to recruit some neighbors to make a rhubarb dessert (pie, cobbler, bars, whatever) for her maybe once every week or so for May and June".  This was my week and I decided to make a cobbler (because it seemed easier than pie, and I think I have mentioned before that I am rather lazy).  First, I went down to Monica's and we picked the rhubarb - yes, picked it.  My first time - and might I mention that one of Monica's rhubarb plants is over 40 years old and is still going strong.  We sliced it off at the stalk with a knife, then removed the leaf (poisonous; you can't even feed it to goats, so you know it's bad!).  Then I brought it home and chopped it up and looked up a recipe for rhubarb cobbler (I used the one from thepioneerwoman.com because I like her other recipes).  Then I cooked the rhubarb until it was soft.  Then I panicked, because this variety of rhubarb is green, and I thought that a green cobbler would look really weird, so I threw in some blueberries I had, and added a couple of drops of red food coloring (I tell you, that helped so much!!).  Bonus - I had enough of the fruit to make a small second cobbler for us for dessert tonight (there it is in the picture, along with the gorgeous peonies I got on Sunday for my anniversary).

Eating this wonderful cobbler, with vanilla ice cream, was not the best part of the day, however.  The best part was when I took the cobbler down to Sue's house and she came to the door, bald, wearing a dress, and hugged me three times in about two minutes, and showed the cobbler to her whole family, and thanked me over and over.  Seriously, I would like to propose that one way to feel better, if you are sad, anxious, or upset, is to do something for someone else.  It doesn't even have to be a big thing, and it can be done anonymously, too.  But truly, doing something as simple and easy as making a dessert has made my day (or two, or week)!  And of course, I am reminded once again what a blessing it is to live here in my amazing and wonderful neighborhood.

riding the bus

Jason has had his license for about 6 weeks now, and in an effort to be cool parents, we are trying to let him drive to school whenever we can.  So....a couple of days a week, I have been hitching a ride down to Cal Poly with Jamey, and then riding the bus home later on.  It's actually pretty convenient, because the bus picks me up right in front of the student union, and then drops me off at the corner of my street, with only one or two stops in between.  And it's cheaper to ride the bus than it is to park on campus for the day (Jamey parks along the street for free and walks onto campus, but I am far too lazy to do that, so I usually pay to park in the garage.  I justify it by carrying a lot of stuff).
Not being a frequent bus rider (I rode it around SLO exactly once, about 10 years ago, when Jason and another friend were learning about their town for kindergarten), I have been learning a few things:
First, when your bus route is pretty much a winding, uphill road, it is probably not the best idea to try to get some work done on your ipad.  It can make you feel really sick.  Ugh.
Second, because the bus needs to go really slow as it heads uphill, you get a chance to look around and notice things.  For example, there is a little gated road that goes off to the right about halfway up "the grade", and it looks like there is a beautiful ranch back in there.  Or at least a cool camping spot beside a creek.
Another benefit of taking the bus is the smug feeling you get from knowing that you are saving gas and being 'green'.

And because I have been walking from the bus stop to my house, I have been passing by my neighbors' yard, and I noticed the other day that their mama goat had two tiny, adorable kids in her pen.  This is the second time she has given birth to twins.  And as I was passing by, they hopped up onto the picnic table and asked me to please take their picture (in goat language.  Which I speak, actually.  I'm like Dr Doolittle).  My neighbor makes the most fantastic feta cheese from his goats' milk, by the way.  And his goats travel around to other neighbors' yards all summer and keep their weeds down (this is a great service, since we are expecting a bad fire season this year).
So, all in all, riding the bus is turning out to be a pretty good deal.

Hippie Chicks

For whatever reason, I cannot watch the ends of close football or basketball games (or races, or other sporting events).  I can listen, but it makes me really nervous to watch.  So I spent a lot of this year's NCAA March Madness listening to the broadcast, but messing around on the internet.  When I want to waste time on my computer, I often turn to Pinterest.  For those of you who don't know what Pinterest is, it's a web site where you can, on the one hand, find some great recipes, decorating ideas, and household and gardening tips....on the other hand, it's an invitation to covet other people's homes, clothes, and bodies.  

I searched the topic "chickens" and up popped a great web site (Grit.com) with lots of ideas on how to keep your hens healthy and happy.  For example, I learned that putting a half a teaspoon of cider vinegar in my chickens' water can keep away parasites and mites. I was happy to try it, and I am really really happy to report that not only is it keeping my hens happy (I don't think they actually had any parasites or mites before, anyway), but in 24 hours the vinegar in the water had actually cleaned the water container and made it look brand new!! There was also a list of fresh herbs that you can place in the nesting boxes, and the effect of each one.  For example, catnip is a sedative, lemon balm is a stress reliever, and fennel is a laying stimulant - who knew?!  Well, now, I have lots of herbs in the garden and around the house, so I thought, "What the heck?" and put some rose petals (vitamin C), lavender (stress reducer and insecticide), basil (mucus membrane health, whatever that is!), and rosemary (respiratory health) in my nesting boxes.  Apparently, my hens are not into herbs, because less than an hour later they had kicked all of the herbs out of the boxes and all over the ground.  They didn't even eat any, and that's saying something, because these girls eat any old bread product, grass, coffee grounds when they can get them, and even cobwebs.  But that's okay, because they seem pretty happy and relaxed to me, and we have more eggs than we can eat (clearly I need to do some baking!).