Fight or flight?

For some time now I've been thinking about how to make myself safer.  This may seem silly to the average Plain Jane.  I live in a fairly safe town and am wise to my surroundings.  Work, however, has changed my perceptions as to if I could fight my way out of a wet paper sack.  Right now, I don't think I could.  I'm not saying I'm a lost cause.  I've always had the ability to protect myself and put up a good fight.  I've got a solid punch and can be scrappy if the situation calls for it.  Two older brothers will do that to a girl.

The chances of me needing to totally kick somebody's ass is slim.  I've been on duty for 9 months now and have only had a couple of confrontations, which have been settled with a raised voice and verbal commands.  The threat is always there.  All it takes is one person who has a misfire in the engine upstairs or has had one too many bad things happen to them and I could find myself in a fight for my life.  I'd like to be prepared.  

And with many things in my life, I'm reminded of a song in the Disney movie Mulan.  I've had the chorus stuck in my head for days.  At random moments, I'd find myself humming the song "I'll Make a Man Out of You," which plays while Mulan is incognito in the Army training camp.  It shows her determination in going from shy girl to trained fighter.

"We must be swift as the coursing river.  With all the force of a great typhoon.  With all the strength of a raging fire.  Mysterious as the dark side of the moon!"  LOVE it!  

 

I have no specific game plan as to how to take me from frumpy girl to fighter girl.  The defensive tactics I've learned at work is founded in principles of brazilian ju jitsu.  If you know your stuff, size and strength doesn't necessarily matter.  A tiny girl can take down a big muscular guy.  It's all in knowing where to strike and hold pressure.  It's an oversimplified explanation.  Don't let that fool you.  It's also painful.  The week of DT training was the most painful of my life.  I've never been so sore as I was that week.  I cursed myself for going from half marathon runner to slug.

I've tracked down a place in Ft. Collins to learn brazilian ju jitsu on my own.  The training at work is so sparse that I've forgotten a lot of what I learned in that week last December.  Should I give it a try?  Part of me says hell yes.  Part of me says hell no.  I finally cancelled my gym membership because I never used it.  Maybe that money can be reallocated to ju jitsu classes?  Hmmm.  The mind turns.

Tomorrow is a true Friday for me.  I have Saturday off for some Halloween fun with UW girls!!  Another four day weekend! I love my job!

Photographer, I am. Trust me.

Yesterday I had a photo shoot with some friends of mine.  It's been many years since I worked with Audry but it's nice to know that she still thinks of me when it comes time for her photo needs!  She has a very photogenic and energetic family.  It's a tiring time trying to get good photos of her family but its also a lot of fun.  Any time that anyone wants to play guinea pig and allow me some artistic freedom, I'm a happy camper!

Last year, I used the flower gardens at CSU as their backdrop.  This year, we chose the CSU Oval in fall time.  It was a quick decision to get together but it was perfect timing.  It was a pretty blend of greens and yellows on campus so it worked out great!  Great subjects and some great final products fuels the little flame inside me that says I could do this for a living if I really put my head and heart into it.

Piece by piece, maybe a real business will come out of it.  For now I'll just enjoy any opportunity to take photos for people!  Here's a sneak peak ...

How can someone not have fun when taking pictures of those cute kids!! Hopefully I'll get to be their family photographer every year and continue to see them grow!  I look forward to the day they are less antsy and willingly want to cooperate on photo day!!

Anyone else want their photo taken?  Or know of anyone??  Just let me know!! 

It's fall time and the living is easy.

My extended weekend has been relaxing.  Most of yesterday was spent reading The Help.  By far, this was the best book I've read in many, many months.  It was excellent!  I didn't want it to end.  I highly recommend it to anyone out there who is looking for a good book to read.  After reading the book, I googled and sure enough, it's being made into a movie!

I didn't read my entire day away.  Brinkley had a checkup at the doctor for his chronic ear infection.  He's got new meds and seems happier already.  We'll see how it turns out.  I also picked up my next book at the library - Marlee Matlin's biography, I'll Scream Later.

I attempted to bake bread.  I misread the recipe and then decided I better wing it and see if anything resembling bread would come of it.  It didn't work so swell.  Only part of the bread loaf was salvageable.  Drat!

Brinkley and I enjoyed our lazy Tuesday today by going for a walk.  I snapped a few photos of the beautiful fall leaves along the way!  We have had an awesome fall!  And there are still many trees that are green so hopefully fall still has a few weeks to go before it disappears into the freezing chill of winter.

While I watched Gilmore Girls this afternoon, I made some doggie biscuits for the first time.  A little wheat flour, sunflower seeds, water, eggs, and oil and I have 15 good sized biscuits for Brinkley! He was running low so I thought it was about time I try my hand at doggie treats.  It was fun.  His little trout shaped treats were approved by him.  He hauled one around for a few minutes before scarfing it down!  Maybe I can make some extra cash by making gourmet doggie treats!

Fall, football, and friends!!

It was homecoming weekend in Laramie so Bryn, Heidi, Brent and I headed up to Laramie for the football game...finally.  I think it's something us girls talked about doing since graduation.  Seven years later we finally did it!  First stop was the bookstore for some shopping.  We all had our wants and left the store with big bags of Cowboy gear!  We wandered around campus like tourists taking pictures of familiar buildings, gasping at all the amazing changes that have happened on campus, and enjoying the beautiful fall day.  We felt young and old at the same time.   

The football game was fun!  We met up with some other 6th floor Downey girls at half time!  The team got creamed but we stuck it out through the whole thing and did get to see them score once!  Then we headed back towards home.  It was great to see Laramie and campus again.  

Sunday morning I tried my hand at pumpkin pancakes!  I thought they turned out pretty good.  It was a day in the kitchen for me.  I also mixed up some granola bars and concocted a tater tot casserole for dinner.  Both were delicious!  It was a busy weekend - one for the scrapbook!  And two more days off after it made it even greater!! 

I'm going to blanch them! You're going to do what?!

It's been a week of recipe firsts.  First it was fried green tomatoes.  Then it was s'mores brownies.  Tonight I tacked the grocery bag full of carrots that I brought home from my parent's house.  I washed and peeled the carrots.  Then I shredded two cups worth and set that aside.  I diced the rest of the carrots.

First on tonight's recipe agenda was making carrot cake muffins.  This was my first ever attempt at anything carrot cake related and it went flawlessly.  The muffins turned out great!  I didn't make any cream cheese frosting.  Maybe some other time, but for tonight I just wanted to use up some of the carrots.

As for the diced carrots, I tried my hand at blanching.  May sound like an easy task but I'd never done it and Brent had never heard of it.  This will be a skill (is it really a skill? I boiled water) that will definitely be good to know for the future.  When all was blanched and cold, I put three bags of diced carrots into the freezer!!  I have no clue what I'll do with them, but they are there!  Bring on 2010 snowstorm because I've got carrots!! (Mother Nature, please note, I'm joking.  Don't you dare steal away my beautiful fall colors just yet!)

In other wonderful fall news... after months on the wait list, I finally have my library copy of The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  I've heard rave reviews about this book and judging from the length of the wait list, so have a lot of other people.  I think I need to force myself to stop playing on the computer at night so my mind can actually unwind and maybe go to sleep at a decent hour.  Hopefully a good book will help me change that routine.  I'm a night owl lately - hoot hoot!

OH! Speaking of owls...  I was working at an accident scene about a week ago and an owl flew across the parking lot where we were parked.  It swooped down, hooting and flapping its wings, then landed on top of light pole and watched the ground.  It was the coolest thing!! I love owls but had never seen one in real life, except maybe at the zoo.  And I can't tell you the last time I was at the zoo.

Hoot, hoot.  Enough rambling...I'm off to bed.  To bed, I said.

It's 12:32 a.m. - Happy Friday, y'all!

The Last Harvest and A New Beginning

The last of the basil that started as seed on my window sill has been harvested.  The sweet aroma of basil filled the house as I brought each plant inside and snapped off each leaf.  I filled a freezer bag full of leaves and tucked it in the freezer.  Some day those beautiful green leaves will make yummy pesto sauce!!

Fall is in full swing in my neck of the woods and I love it!  The crisp morning air now requires me to bundle up in the morning to take the dog out.  The cozy hug of a hoodie is the perfect way to start the day! The varying shades of green and yellow on the trees give me something to look at while Brink does his business.  He loves this time of year too.  The squirrels are moving around frantically in search of morsels to tuck away in their nests for winter.  Brinkley watches their every move as they scurry from tree to tree.  My desperate urge for coffee usually overrides his interest in tree varmints and I drag him back to the house so that I can pump my veins with caffeine.

My mornings and late nights the last few weeks have been consumed with coming up with ways to fill my extra day off that I'll get when my schedule changes next week.  Three whole days off each week!! Sigh! Oh the possibilities.  It really feels like a new beginning of sorts.  Two of my three days off will be just me and Brink.  I'll have to find ways to entertain myself on Mondays and Tuesdays while the rest of the people in my world work.  Various things I've checked into thus far... sewing and knitting classes, brazilian ju jitsu, sign language clubs, spin classes, gun clubs, yoga classes, and volunteer opportunities.  Now I know I can't do it all but it's nice to envision trying new things and meeting new people.

Oh, the possibilities!

Sweet October.

I love this time of year.  If tulips bloomed in fall, I would be most content living my entire life in October.  The colorful trees make the daily driving around town more interesting.  The piles of pumpkins at storefronts and on house steps provide me an odd inspiration.  I just want to drive my car up to a pumpkin patch and say load it up!!  Carve 'em, paint 'em, stack 'em, bake 'em...who doesn't love pumpkins?!  This weekend I picked up some pumpkins of my own!  Finally!  While the picking was good, I'm loaded up on those wonderful globes of orange!

I already had some decorative gourds and mini pumpkins from the garden at Green Acre!  And now I have four beauties from a pumpkin patch north of town.  It was windy, cold, and we were tired when we were there so I don't have any pictures.  I pay still hit up another pumpkin patch next weekend.  I love me some pumpkins!!!

Brent and I spent our Saturday up at Green Acre gifting my mom with labor for her birthday.  She had a list of things that she wanted done and I think tackled most of them.  Using a mini-track hoe we dug up more roots and turned soil, cut down a tree and tore up the trunk and roots, and emptied more junk from the garage.  Monty and I needed to show some TLC to the '67 while we were there.  It turned over like a champ and we took it up to Laporte for a fuel-up, wash, and air in the tires!

We also planted another blue spruce tree out front and emptied the last of what the garden had to offer before tearing up all the plants and dead and corn stalks.  I took home a box load of green tomatoes ... and made fried green tomatoes for the first time.  They weren't too bad!

Yesterday Brent and I watched a movie and ran some grocery store errands.  I made some mini brownies and smores brownies.  The s'mores brownies were a concoction on the fly and it worked.  I lined the bottom of my square brownie dish with graham crackers and then poured in the rest of the brownie mix left over from the mini bites pan.  I baked that until almost done and then sprinkled mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, and graham pieces on the top and baked it for about five minutes more.  It turned out awesome!!!  And it was delicious!!

We ended our weekend with dinner at his parent's house.  It was my last two day weekend.  I have my last five day week ahead of me and then my schedule changes, hopefully for the better.  I have a four, yes FOUR, day weekend ahead of me next weekend and I can't wait!  We're heading to Laramie for the homecoming football game.  GO POKES!!  Can't wait to see my UW girlie girls!

Day Eight: The long stretch home

The last day of our road trip started out with a rowdy bunch of Nebraskans at breakfast in the Holiday Inn.  The whole room was crowded with people in red shirts and all trying to shout over the top of one another.  Apparently no one was aware that it was only 8 o'clock in the morning and maybe, just maybe, some people like peace and quiet in the morning with their morning cup of coffee.  We were glad to bid Omaha goodbye after that experience.  

Nebraska was long.  Very long.  We drove.  And then drove some more.  We stopped in at Grand Island to see the Hornady plant.  It was closed but we got to see how big it is!  It was much bigger than one would think.  Somewhere near there we were on a backroad and saw this garden....

Those are pumpkins, folks! HUGE pumpkins!  Someday I would like to grow pumpkins that big!  Yes, that was the highlight of central Nebraska.

While we were in the middle of Kansas we decided to get lunch.  I have no idea which town we were in but we found an A & W diner!!  It made me miss A & W.  Great root beer, yummy cheese curds, and a chili dog!!  The diner was still set up with the phones to order from the booth.  We ordered from the counter.  Had I noticed the phones prior to sitting down, I would have ordered from the phone.  Boo.
 

Anywho, it was delicious!  That would be worth driving through Nebraska.  They should put a HUGE billboard on the interstate.  I think they would attract more people that way.  And it got me thinking about franchising A & Ws.  Maybe I should give it a try!  That's how much I miss me some A & W in Fort Fun.

After lunch, we drove some more.  There were no fun and witty conversations between Brent and me.  We were content with the hum of the tires and the variety of entertainment on Sirius radio.  We stopped in Sidney at Cabelas, of course.  Then we headed out to the small town of Potter to meet up with our friends Aric and Sara.  After a mini-detour to the farm, we headed back towards home.  Wyoming was near and we attempted to listen to the UW football game on the radio.

We stopped at a rest stop and then we stopped at a gas station in Cheyenne.  The final photos of our long, long trip on the road were of Wyoming.  When we entered Colorado it was dark.

It was nice to be home again.  And it was wonderful to see Mr. Brinkley Miles! And Milo kitty!  The road trip was awesome and it was as great as I hoped it would be, but it was definitely nice to be home again!

(And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.  Whew!)

Day Seven: Iowa from right to left

The Radisson that Brent and I stayed at the night before was directly across the street from our first destination of the day - The John Deere Pavilion.  Filled with shiny new and old tractors and other farm equipment, the Pavilion is an interactive display of sorts.  Calling it a museum would be a stretch.  It's one big advertisement and play zone.  One section focused on history, another the future.  We happened to show up on Illinois Ag Day or something and the place was crawling with hundreds of children who were all trying to talk louder than each other.

Unfortunately, the hoards of misbehaving children won out and Brent and I didn't stay long.  We checked out some of the history displays and hopped up in a few pieces of equipment.  Brent attempted to explain a fuel injected engine cut-out to me.

 We were interested in taking a tour of the John Deer Factory but found out that the company is far from visitor friendly.  They have some dumb system to where you have to call a 1-800 number and talk to a national tour coordinator.  I called the number and got some dumb recording and had to leave my name and phone number.  It's been three weeks and I've yet to get a call back.  So, no John Deere tour for us.  Boo on them.

So we left the great state of Illinois and entered Iowa.  The rest of our day was dedicated to Iowa.

Over the Mississippi we went and before we knew it we were approaching the World's Largest Truckstop!  Of course we had to stop and check that out.  And it was HUGE!  It had full size semis inside and about every tacky souvenir and truck accessory imaginable.  We did find awesome CB antennas for my brothers while we there!

Across the parking lot from the truckstop is the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum, which has a pretty cool collection of old trucking tucks.  All were in pretty great shape!!  It was a nice place to stop and stretch the legs.

Back on the road, we headed towards our last presidential library of the trip.  This one was an add on.  I really didn't know it was on the route until we were in Kansas City.  The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum was just of I-80 in West Branch, Iowa.  This was the smallest and least flashy museum of the lot but it was interesting to learn about a lesser known president.  Hoover was an engineer and travelled the globe prior to his entrance into politics.  He was a great organizer and helped feed the world's starving populations during and after World War I and II.  He was a millionaire and his wife was a firecracker.  She shot guns and loved the outdoors and was involved with the Girl Scouts.

After touring the museum we drove around the grounds to the gravesite of the Hooovers.  It was peaceful and unassuming for a man of millions and a far cry from the marbled and stain-glassed chapel of Ike's final resting place.

Iowa was pretty.  The rolling fields of corn were beautiful.  We made tracks into Iowa City for lunch.  That was against our better judgment probably.  The busy college town was hilly and filled with traffic.  The one pizza place we were looking for didn't open until 4pm so we just parked and found the closest thing, which was the Bluebird Diner.  Burgers and fresh squeezed lemonade did the trick.  The traffic and late lunch had made us testy but we hit the road with a renewed urge to enjoy the rest of the trip and get home.

The rest of the day was spent driving.  And driving.  We made it all the way across Iowa and entered Omaha, Nebraska in the dark.  We were more than happy to find our Holiday Inn Express for the night.  One more day on the road and we'd be home.  It was kind of sad but also a good thing.  Our brains were overloaded with great experiences and our bodies tired from the constant go, go, go of trying to see and experience as much as we could.