Five Things

One: Facebook tells me that today is Josh's birthday. My engagement calendar tells me that Wednesday the ninth is. I am not sure which to believe. My impulse is to believe my engagement calendar, because I have had friends who put down false dates for various reasons. Of course, I do not know why Josh would do that. I also do not know why I would have the wrong date written down. I am more likely to make a mistake about this than Josh is, though. Happy birthday, dear friend.

Two: I have seven school days left until the end of the semester. In that time, I have two days of classes (though only one left of research methods. and the people rejoiced.), two sessions of clinic, one session of APD diagnostics, two final exams, two final projects, and one final presentation. I feel much less overwhelmed than one might expect from that list. I actually feel that that is adequate time for everything and that all will be well at the end of this next week and a half. I certainly am looking forward to break, though.

Three: I am frustrated at my Dad and his constant refusal to try new or unfamiliar things, especially food. "Oh I love Thai food! But I do not like peanut sauce. Or coconut milk. Or curry." "Well, Mexican's all right when your mom makes it," (which means chicken burritos) "but I do not really like Mexican restaurant food." Gah. I love trying new foods and it makes me upset when he will not.

Four: It is freaking cold here, and I miss California. I am all for winter, and snow. But right now it is too cold and too dry to snow, so it is mostly just miserable and windy.

Five: A coworker wants to set me up with another coworker (whom I have met once). I am not sure how I feel about this.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

Only a Year?

Today marks one year of my being back here. I still do not want to be here, although a lot of healing has happened over the past twelve months. I am more hopeful for the future, now. I think I have grown; I hope I have, at least. It is hard to believe that it has only been a year - it seems so much longer than that. But then again, it also astounds me that it has been a year already. Time has always seemed paradoxical to me, I suppose.

Not much more to say about it, really. But it needed remembering.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

As Insanity Plateaus

Just a quick update, tonight. Life keeps on going, as it is wont to do. I have settled into what seems to be a good routine. I am finally used to my class/clinic schedule (half-way through the semester), and getting a decent amount of sleep. I love clinic so much, which is encouraging as that is what I plan to be doing for the majority of the rest of my life. I wish I could talk more about clinic, but HIPPA forbids it, so I shall refrain.

I also love my job. It has been a long time since I have been able to say that, and it feels wonderful to be able to do so. For I while I said I loved Albertson's, but that was more of a reaction against ICT than affection for the job itself, and I was really fairly miserable there. But Barnes and Noble! I still get giddy when I think about it. Sometimes I will be there, at night, straightening books on the shelf, and just start giggling, uncontrollable happiness welling up inside of me. It has been a long time since I really enjoyed what I am doing, and it feels nice to have that again.

Acclimating to my schedule also means I now have a tiny bit more free time than I have in the past few weeks. I get to go see Where the Wild Things Are with Glennda tomorrow, and I am incredibly excited about it. It was a defining book of my childhood, and I have only heard good things about it so far. Also, spending time with Glennda is the best part of being in Spokane, so tomorrow evening is doubly lovely for that reason.

I am looking ahead more and more, trying to figure out where my life is headed, where I am going to end up, even just for my hospital internship. I will be applying at hospitals in the Seattle area and the LA area. I think I would be happy in either place - I just do not want to be stuck here. It is still a while out, but planning is a good thing.

I had a good talk with a dear friend last week about healing. It is a difficult thing. I think I will write more on that, later.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

Driving back to Spokane from Seattle is always difficult for me. Interstate Ninety goes across Washington (and all the way to Boston, for that matter), but to get to that freeway I have to drive on the Five South (which stretches from Canada to Mexico) for a few miles. This time was the hardest: a full tank of gas, a good eight hours before I would be missed, enough clothes to get by for a while.

In my head, I know that Seattle is not much closer to LA than Spokane is - only about a hundred and fifty mile difference, since from Spokane one cuts through the middle of Oregon. Pythagorean theorem at work, there. But being on that road, it seems so much closer, so much more possible. Yesterday I cried as, at the last second, I took the exit for I-Ninety. Twice I nearly turned around and went back, ran south.

But I know that I can not go back, not yet. I have school starting soon. I have a job. But two years is so long to wait to be back. So much can happen in that time, and I am so afraid that I will never be able to return. I constantly fear that I am losing my friendships, that I will end up alone.

I am still angry that I was forced to come here. I am still lonely and hurting. I do not know if I will heal from it, because it hurts, awfully. I do not know if I want the pain to lessen, if I want to be comfortable and happy here. I want to go back; I do not want to become complacent here, stuck here forever. I am so scared of that.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

Whatever happened to "Read a good book this summer!" or "Have fun and be safe!" on school reader-boards? For the month leading up to Independence Day, the reader-board on the middle school I drive by on my way to work read, "Fireworks are Illegal. $513 fine in Spokane." At first I laughed, but in retrospect, it makes me sort of sad. Yes, fireworks are illegal in Spokane County. Yes, we can get them very easily because we are about twenty minutes from Idaho. Yes, middle-schoolers probably should not play with fireworks even if they were not illegal. But is it the responsibility of the school to warn them against that? Is such a warning even effective? I feel like the kids who are likely to acquire and play with fireworks are the ones who are also likely, in general, to do whatever the school says not to do. Signs like this seem to me to, at worst, aggravate the problem, or, at best, have no effect whatsoever. I very much prefer those signs which encourage good behavior, not discourage negative. After all, while the message is essentially the same, "Read Read Read" or "Have fun in the Sun!" are much nicer than "Stop being a couch potato!" or "TV rots your brain!"

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Spring, here

Two things about spring in the inland northwest.

One thing that I missed very much in California: clouds. We have lovely clouds in the spring. They make the semi-cold often-rainy passive-aggressive weather fairly worth the frustration of never knowing how to dress.

One thing I did not miss at all in California: fish trees. We have these horrid trees. They are pretty, with nice, white flowers. Nice, white flowers that smell like rotting fish. These trees are everywhere, and they bloom for about a month. Wretched.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Driving, Part Two

Remember when I said that drivers from here would not survive in California? Well, I have realized lately that this probably goes both ways, at least at this time of year. Driving in the winter is difficult, and, amazingly, people around here seem to become better drivers in inclement weather. (Whereas in California people freeze up when it starts raining.) For one thing, lines on the roads denoting lanes become meaningless in heavy snow. A road that is, in the summertime, two lanes each way with a center-turn lane becomes a road with one lane each way. Through the tire tracks, you can sometimes see a white dotted line, or a yellow line. But you simply have to follow along where the newly defined lane is. Sometimes this road will turn back into two lanes, only to have the right lane end abruptly in a bank left by the latest snow plow. You need to be on your toes to drive, around here.

Side roads are awful during the winter. They get plowed, but last. By the time they are plowed, the snow has often already been compacted quite a bit. I am not really certain how it happens, but after the plow comes through, the road ends up getting very bumpy. A combination of factors, I suppose, including traffic, plow, and weather. But driving on this type of road is tricky. The best way to do it is to not try to steer at all - idle along, not really even holding the wheel. Oh, of course, you have to have a hand on it, in case of emergency, but you can not do too much in the way of steering anyway. It is somewhat fun, once you get the hang of it. But I would be willing to bet that most Southern Californians would rather walk than try to navigate our roads right now.

In other news, gas is down to about one forty-five.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

One Day of Freedom

I got out yesterday, after being house-bound since Wednesday. I actually had not left the house since Monday, simply because I did not have any reason to go out on Tuesday, and I had no reason to suspect I would not be able to leave after then. It took a lot of work to be able to leave. You see, my house is situated at the end of a one block road, off of the main road, that comes to a T at our driveway. (See diagram. It is not to scale. Sorry about that.) So any traffic that had barreled through the massive amounts of snow down the road either turned left or right, pushing even more snow toward our driveway and not giving us any help on getting cleared out. And even if we could leave the driveway, our cars were too low to the ground to make it out in the tracks that had been put in the road, because they were all made by trucks, which have higher centers than our cars, so we would have gotten stuck anyway. Make sense? Following so far? Good.

So, on Saturday, three neighbours got out their snow-blowers and snow... -blowed? -blew? a lane clear down the one block road. They did not clear out the front of our driveway, but at least now if we got out of the driveway, we would be able to get out to the main road. So Dad worked really really hard Saturday night, and I was able to leave on Sunday. I went to church, and had a five hour shift at work. It was very very nice to get out of the house.

But then last night, the stupid plow people came along and ruined everything. You see, they plowed our road. We had it fine! It was accessible, people were getting in and out; it was hard, but doable. But then the plows came. And where do you think all the snow from that one block in from the main road ended up? If you thought "why, the magical snow faeries must have magicked it away!" than you thought incorrectly. It ended up right in front of our driveway. There is now a barrier about four feet high and five feet wide blocking us in. We have it much worse than the neighbours, being right at the T of the road. From what I could see, they have maybe a foot high, two or three feet wide. Stupid plow people. And it is snowing again, lots and lots. We have gotten perhaps nine or ten more inches.

I have another shift at work tomorrow, and I hope I will be able to get out for it. And I have Christmas presents to mail, which will be rather late. I do not know that that is so bad, though, since it extends Christmas for people. I have always enjoyed late gifts; I have an aunt who was usually two or three weeks late on birthdays. But I also have to mail out two books that were bought from me on half.com, and I am supposed to mail them within a week of their being ordered. I will likely email the buyers and apologize profusely for being snowed in and unable to get to the post office. Mostly I am just worried about making it to work. I really need the hours, and the money that comes from them. On the plus side, snow is very beautiful. Here are some more pictures that I took before this latest storm:
















































































Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

Snow, Snow, Beautiful Snow

It has not stopped snowing in over a day.

Last night we set a record for most snow in a twenty-four hour period.

When I woke up this morning, there were over twenty inches on the ground.

Here are some pictures. They are not very good, because they are from inside my house, but later I will go out and take some better ones and post them.




The SUV parked across the road.













The fir tree in my backyard.
And part of my backyard.
You can see, down at the bottom, a bit of the walk.
My dad has shoveled three times this morning, starting at three o'clock am.















Our dogwood tree in the backyard.
And the itty-bitty baby maple tree, off to the right there.
And most of the rest of the backyard.












I do love snow.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

City of Lights

No, I'm not in Paris. *lesigh*

I'm home, and I'm just now calling it the city of lights. You see, as I flew in last night, I watched the lights from the sky. And they were magnificent. It is always beautiful flying in - there is something about coming home after a long time that makes it seem to be the most beautiful place in the world. But last night, the valley looked like a bed of sparkling diamonds. It was after we landed that I realized the reason for this was the Christmas lights. You know the type - "icicle" lights that blink on and off. Well, from so high up, each houses' light show was discernable as one light, blinking quickly. It was incredible. So I thought I would share the beautiful image with my few readers, and let you know that I am home, happy, rested, and looking forward to my month-and-a-half long break.

Blessings on your travels,

Emily