Thankful Thursday #3

 This week I'm thankful for:

• Luna! This is Luna's 3-year adoptaversary. She's got a little gray fur on her snoot and toes, but she's still the same loving goofball she was 3 years ago. She is still the best decision I ever made.

• Board games and friends- Last Saturday I was at my friends Sandy and Stephen's place all day learning how to play Scythe. It was really fun, and also funny how epically I lost. Yay for brunch and friends.

• Good books and warm blankets. It is freaking cold this week and it's only going to be colder next week. I'm glad for central heat, blankets, Luna my bed-warmer, and my current read- Switchboard Soldiers by Jennifer Chiaverini. I'm learning about the 'Hello Girls' in WWI, and coincidentally that's where my US history podcast is as well. :) 

• Learning how to back up online files- This is something I've been meaning to do for YEARS, and I finally figured out how to back up this blog and my fb posts without having to copy and paste every individual entry. Woo!

Thankful Thursday #2

 This week I'm thankful for: 

• Snow! We got about 7 inches of snow on Monday, the most we've had in 3 years. It's the most we've had since I've had Luna, and she got to bounce around in it in the yard a bit. She doesn't seem to mind it, but it's also not her favorite thing. I mean, cold, wet feet would also not be my favorite thing, not to mention sticking your bum in the snow to go potty. The snow is very pretty though, and MoCo kids got 3 days off of school. :)

• A week to ease back into work. I still have some colleagues on PTO, so not a lot of meetings this first week back. After 2 full weeks off, it's nice to have the luxury of organizing my brain and my files for the coming year.

• Some mid-week online board gaming with friends Monday night due to snow canceling things. 7 Wonders anyone?

• Being able to pay my respects to President Jimmy Carter at the US Capitol. I took a few hours off yesterday and went downtown with Elisa (we went separately and were about 30 minutes apart in the line) to view his casket lying in state. We waited a little over 2 hours. He has always been one of my public health heroes so I was really glad I was able to go.

Snowy Memories

 

Snowy Memories

A good snow reminds me of snow days as a kid. (Also some shenanigans and adventures as a young adult, but that’s a separate post ha) Growing up in Maryland, we usually got a couple of snows every winter. They were usually only a few inches, but that was enough for sledding.

The house I grew up in until I was 12 was on a hill from the front to back, so the side yard sloped down into the backyard. Excellent sledding on the side without the neighbor’s fence, except for 2 things.

1. There was a tree right in the middle of the bottom of the hill (!)
2. If you DIDN'T hit the tree, you kept going down a much bigger hill and would wind up on a highway (!!)

So we put a canoe pillow on tree and you actually aimed for it when sledding (it was a small hill). When I was little, I didn’t weigh enough to ever make it to the tree, but when one of my parents sat behind me on the sled, we very much did. Cue much excitement and giggling :D

When I was older my parents drove me to the ENORMOUS hill at the middle school, and my friends and I would go FLYING. Especially the time I hit a very well-constructed snow ramp 2/3 of the way down that was invisible from the top of the hill. I was 8, I lived.

When we moved into another house when I was 12, I went sledding in my friend’s yard 2 houses away, and she and her siblings had constructed an elaborate sledding track that we whooshed along. It was kind of like a luge track; I think they even poured water on it to freeze it. It had a big curve so you wouldn’t sled directly into the basement of the house, but I remember they banked the curve well. The level of difficulty increased when her dogs were outside, because while the lab and German Shepherd just ran around in the snow, the Rottweiler wanted to help you sled and would grab your foot and try and fling you down the sledding track backwards. I wish I had photos/videos of this, but alas I was born in the dinosaur ages before cell phones, so you’ll just have to imagine. A lot of screaming and laughing and ‘Butchie, stop it! Ouch! Quit it! Mooooooom!’

I think the coolest snow memory I have is from 1993, when we had ‘The Blizzard of ‘93’. We got a good 2 feet of snow and were out of school for the entire week. That’s like an extra Christmas when you’re a kid. My friend Liz and I walked in the woods behind her street for what seemed like hours and miles. Looking it up on a map as an adult, I think we walked ½ mile, but in deep snow. We were completely in the snowy woods, and we found a stream we didn’t know was there. We also found a deer antler. (Which as I was holding it and Liz was like, that’s an antler, I dropped it in horror thinking that meant there was a dead deer around. She laughed at me and informed me that deer shed their antlers yearly.) Walking in the woods like that, an 8- and 9-year-old by ourselves, was just the coolest thing. We knew we weren’t lost because we just had to follow our snow trail back. For some reason we never tried to go back in warmer weather, so that place lives in my mind as our epic snow adventure.

I haven’t sledded in a while as an adult, but I will always enjoy a good snow, and even better when I hear kids squealing with laughter playing in it. 

Thankful Thursday #1

 A blogger that I love, Kristen at The Frugal Girl, The Frugal Girl - cheerfully living on less , does a weekly post of things she is thankful for, and I want to start this practice this year.

So, for the first few days of 2025, I'm thankful for:

• PTO. I had a great week seeing family last week, and this week I'm staycationing- seeing local friends and generally resting.

• New friends- my friend has invited me into her board game group this past year, and I got to hang out with them for new years eve playing games.

• Old friends- I had lunch with a high school friend today and am seeing another one tomorrow. 

New Year, More Writing?

 I have two goals for 2025. Write more, and finish some things.

I don't know about anyone else, but I have a lingering list of things I need/should do that sometimes keeps me from trying new things. 

• I should finish those 5 books I'm in the middle of before picking up a 6th
• It would be a good idea if I actually finished painting the walls in my house 
• I need to get those financial things done
• Why do I have 5 unfinished scrapbooks?
• I need to make those phone calls
• I really should freecycle that pile of things I've labeled freecycle...
• I'd like to clean out my freezer by eating the random things in there and starting fresh

So if you are interested, join me this year in finishing your side quests that have lingered in your mind or on a to-do list for too long. I'm going to try and post #FinishFriday each week to keep myself accountable. 

I'm also going to try to write more in general, so we'll see how that goes. Happy New Year!

Shock and Hope

It's a gorgeous day outside right now. Everything is blooming and it's a perfect 70 degrees with sunshine.

I actually have no recollection of the weather 17 years ago, except reading in retrospect that it was too windy for helicopters to fly in Blacksburg.

April 16th, 2007 was a Monday. I had graduated from Virginia Tech the spring before in 2006. In 2007 I was working on VT's campus in their corporate research center for a small pharmaceutical company start-up. That weekend, I had been at a family reunion in South Carolina. My mom had spent the night with me in my one-bedroom apartment (rent was $560 a month!) Sunday night and was driving home to Maryland on Monday morning. I was in meetings for the first hour or two of my day, and only when aimlessly checking CNN around 10:30 did I realize anything was wrong.

It's weird what your brain remembers during trauma. I remember the morning pretty well. We were on campus, so we were put on lock down. My phone was blowing up because everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, that I ever met, was calling to see if I was okay. This was before Facebook had that feature where you could mark yourself safe. I do not remember getting anything done at work. I don't remember when I left work.

I remember winding up in a bar with some friends. Not sure I could name exactly who. We ate some food and just stared at the continuous news coverage being filmed 200ft away from us. I remember having no idea how to go about figuring out if the hundreds of people I knew were okay or accounted for. Blacksburg is a college town. There was a possibility that anyone I knew could have been on campus.

I wound up at a friend's house at an impromptu church small group. One of my friends had lost a friend and was inconsolable. I wound up at another friend's house at almost midnight to check on them because they had also lost someone.

I wish people understood how something like a mass shooting affects an entire community. I did not personally know anyone that was killed or injured, but it seemed like everyone I know did. It affected me profoundly even though I didn't personally lose a friend. Everyone I know was in deep shock and grief. The entire community was under the scrutiny of the national and international media, their presence a reminder of just how bad this was. 

One of the main things I remember was the shock. How could something like this happen here? Honestly, I felt like the entire first year was our community processing that and trying to answer questions that have no answers. Only when we reached the first anniversary did it feel like we could  start to focus on healing.

I wonder today if I would feel the same shock if a place I loved was the scene of another mass shooting. I don't say that because I don't love where I live. I say it because mass shootings are now so common. 

I admit to having lost a lot of hope where gun violence is concerned. While the March for Our Lives in 2018 was a big step in the right direction, I really felt like we passed a point of no return with the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook. If murdered 6 year olds don't change things, than I really don't know what will.

That's not say I'm not supporting things like mental health awareness, and working with and supporting high school and college students, and gun control. But I guess I can't emotionally engage as much as I used to, even if I try to walk the walk. I am taking a bleeding control and Narcan class this week though- we'll see how that goes.

I hope that there will be change. I hope that people with profound mental illness get the help they need. I hope we can pass some common sense gun reforms. I hope gen Z, that has been through countless lockdown drills their entire lives, kicks ass and takes names when they get political power. I hope that we don't lose hope, and I include myself in that.

Every year I'm reminded that there are 32 Hokies I never got to meet. 32 people that aren't enjoying this beautiful weather we're having right now. So go enjoy the spring, hug your loved ones, and if you can, do an act of service for someone today. Our VT motto is Ut Prosim- That I May Serve. And today, we are all Hokies.

Adventures in Birding

 A medium adventure! My friend Carol and I went to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge for the day on Saturday (2/10/2024). Winter is one of my favorite seasons for birding for a few reasons. One, its not beastly hot outside :) Two, its much easier to see birds in the trees when there are no leaves. And three, its weird duck season. Where I am on the east coast, we get lots of interesting ducks that migrate here from Canada for the winter. 

Blackwater is about 2 hours away from us, so we got there about 10am. 

Thousands of snow geese flying over the water.

Unfortunately I didn't have my good camera with me (it's trying very hard to die, I need to replace it), so I just have some landscapes from my phone. 

We saw lots of eagles, tons of ducks, several great blue herons, 3 different types of woodpeckers, and a Great Horned Owl peeking out of its nest. Also thousands of tundra swans mixed with Canada geese.

Canvasback ducks, ring necked ducks, and American Wigeons in Cambridge, MD, about 15 minutes north of the refuge.

We stopped for a yummy dinner at Fisherman's Inn on Kent Island on the way home. Yum!